#i will do absolutely anything to avoid real shading

[bathroomtrapped]

and before you ask, yes he conditions the wig hair

#i will do absolutely anything to avoid real shading #line art 🔛🔝 #i love when theyre just like fuck it guess were in a serial killer cult now #or lawrence is super into it and adams just kinda like welp. whatever makes u happy ig #LOL #saw 2004 #lawrence gordon #adam faulkner stanheight #chainshipping #cary elwes #leigh whannell #larry art tag

[canmom]

How do you live?

I (finally!) saw Miyazaki's new film 君たちはどう生きるか (How Do You Live?/The Boy and the Heron)! It's been out in the States for a while, and in Japan considerably longer, but it took a while to make its way over here.

I remember at the time it came out, people were having fun riffing on the incredibly cryptic marketing campaign, which consisted only of this rather abstract poster...

In the spirit of this, I resolutely avoided watching any trailers or knowing anything at all about the plot of the film. I picked up a thing or two here and there - I knew to expect some amazing Shinya Ohira animation for example, and you couldn't really avoid seeing the bird with teeth! - but overall, I had no idea.

There's plenty of great writing about this film in English already, such as kvin's fantastic sakugablog piece which discusses the physicality of Ghibli's animation, its weight and springiness, as a throughline. The stuff that kvin talks about really stood out to me as I watched this film. You can likewise read detailed interviews with Toshiyuki Inoue (fantastic interview for sakubutas) and Akihiko Yamashita on fufuro.

First up, the credits of this film are pretty much a who's who of the greatest jp animators of the last 30 years, and they've had some 7 years to cook it, so naturally this film looks fucking amazing. This is absolutely the kind of film that only Miyazaki could direct - its design language feels so familiar and yet it's iterating in all kinds of visually imaginative directions that show that yeah, the old bastard's still got it.

And like, god, man. This film's animation is really something special. Its real-world scenes in particular are full of shots that require an unbelievably strong sense of space, of both subtle and broad acting, the classic Ghibli attention to detail on mechanical objects and everyday tasks. It's full of bouncing and squishing and squeezing and oozing things. It loves to draw crowds and swarms of people and animals. It's the kind of film where any given shot would be the absolute star-of-the-show sakuga moment in just about any other anime film. If you wanted a complete statement of the Ghibli school of animation, it would be hard to do better.

And yet, for all that Miyazaki's known for his tight control over animation and heavy corrections to animators, in this film he had to step back from that kind of role and hand over the sousakkan reins to Takeshi Honda, who steps up admirably - as kvin writes above, bringing in more realist elements to the bouncy Miyazaki style to create a really effective unity that grounds all the big fantastical elements of the film and fills the first act with tension.

Alongside all that excellent key animation, the film's colour and photography departments evidently understand that well-chosen colours and good highlight shapes beat all the digital gradients and overlays you can imagine - the drawings get plenty of form from the strength of the animation, and the flat shading really pops. The backgrounds are as delicious as ever, skyscapes and vegetation and opulent interiors with the just-slightly desaturated and harmonious colours that just kind of remind you that oh yeah, it is still possible to do it this way.

Basically it's a Ghibli film lol. You know how it is.

But what of the story...? What's all this technical magic in service of?

The film's story has something of the feel of a serial story, perhaps reflecting Miyazaki's (in)famous process of working out the film gradually as he draws the storyboards. Certain ideas, like the parakeet empire, arrive in the film rather suddenly and then become fairly central to the plot. There's a clear emotional throughline, but this is not a film that is in a hurry to explain itself more than it absolutely has to. It wants to keep its magical elements numinous and mysterious. I would say, though, it's generally more satisfying in this approach than some of Miyazaki's other later films like Howl's Moving Castle, and resolves a lot more clearly.

So what is it like, About? Well, Miyazaki has been pretty open about channeling a lot of his personal relationships into the film, and a lot of it seems to reflect more or less obliquely on him. It's what they call a 'personal film'. The protagonist's position as the son of an aeroplane factory owner during WWII is straight-up from life. What about the old sorcerer, haphazardly stacking blocks to keep a world alive, and looking for someone to succeed him? The reading's kinda obvious, even if Miya himself says this guy is based on his memory of Takahata. Well, he can be both...

To say more I'm gonna have to delve into the spoiler zone. See you below the cut.

OK so! Let's try and get some thoughts in order.

first, a plot summary type of thing

Our first act introduces us to Mahito at roughly the moment his mother Hisako dies in a hospital fire. This is midway through the war, which is present mostly in the background - now and then we see soldiers marching around, and of course Mahito's dad runs a factory producing warplane parts, not entirely unlike Miyazaki's own father although seemingly a bit higher up the ladder.

We jump forward a little and Mahito's father remarries - to his deceased wife's sister, no less, and she's already pregnant. This is Natsuko, who does her best to play the role of mother, but Mahito still has big traumas and he is understandably not entirely on board with the idea of welcoming a mum 2 who looks almost exactly like mum 1. He moves with Natsuko into a huge old house complex, a mix of older Japanese architecture with a more recent Western wing where the family currently sleeps - and staffed by a small army of colourful old ladies who are eager for any canned meat or cigarettes they can get their hands on.

Also there's this freaky heron that keeps bothering Mahito. It seems to have something to do with a mysterious tower which turns out to have been built by his great-uncle. Mahito visits the tower, but can't make his way inside. Natsuko tells him not to go into the tower.

Mahito goes to school, but naturally they don't much take to the new rich kid on the block, and so after being attacked by his classmates on his way home he injures himself with a rock. (His dumbass dad is like, who did this to you son, I'll fuck 'em up.) For the rest of the movie, he has half his head shaved to accomodate a bandage, which is the sort of attention to detail this movie loves.

The heron has started growing teeth and talking to Mahito, telling him to come to the tower. Mahito is convinced it's a trap, and after a maybe-dream sequence in which Natsuko shoots an arrow to drive off the heron, he steals cigarettes from Natsuko in order to get one of the servants to sharpen his knife, and then constructs a bow and arrow out of bamboo - using a couple of the heron's feathers. Constructing the bow and arrow is shown in immense, loving detail.

In the process, he witnesses Natsuko walk into the forest, and also stumbles on a book: How Do You Live? by Genzaburō Yoshino, which contains a handwritten message from his mother. He looks at this book briefly... and this is about the extent of the connection of the film to the book, beyond thematic parallels.

The maids notice that Natsuko is missing. Mahito tells one of the maids, Kiriko, that he saw her go into the forest, and they follow, finding an old road that gives another approach to the tower. They're greated by the heron man, who is increasingly emerging from the heron's beak to reveal a big warty nose. He's some kind of like... heron selkie or something, a gnome in a heron skin. There's some wonderfully grotesque animation around this guy.

Heron dude taunts Mahito with an illusion of his mother Hisako. Mahito threatens him with the bow - the heron guy is like, do your worst, not realising it's a maaagic arrow. The arrow chases him around the room and pierces his beak, fucking up his magic. At this point, the tower master shows up and orders the heron to guide Mahito. Heron guy sends everyone through the floor into a fantastical world...

Mahito arrives in front of a huge, sinister tomb. He approaches the gate, and a swarm of pelicans walk up behind, crawling all over him and pressing him through the gate. This causes a storm to start brewing, since opening the gate seems to piss off the stones or something...

A fisher woman resembling a much younger Kiriko runs up and chases the pelicans away. She takes Mahito under her wing, explaining that this world is inhabited mostly by dead people, but there are also these little round guys called the wareware, who gain the ability to fly when they eat a fish's guts.

Kiriko, uniquely in this world, has the ability to kill, so she catches fish to sell to the other inhabitants and feed to the wareware; she and Mahito butcher a huge fish. Mahito fairly quickly figures out that she is somehow the same Kiriko that entered with him. She has tiny charms representing the other maids, which serve an apotropaic function.

That night, staying on Kiriko's huge derelict ship of a home, they watch the wareware rise into the sky to be born as humans in Mahito's world. They're attacked by the pelicans, but a fire-wielding magic user called Hisa (hmmmmmmmmmm) drives the pelicans away. Mahito shouts at her not to harm the wareware, but Kiriko assures him that more of the wareware will survive thanks to Hisa's intervention.

Later, a singed and dying pelican explains the pelicans' predicament to Mahito in a scene that calls to mind the animals in Mononoke-hime. The pelicans are foreigners in this world, they don't have anything to eat, so they take it as their role to eat the wareware. The heron man arrives on the scene too, offering to help Mahito find Natsuko as Mahito - coming in to his own as a protagonist more - buries the pelican. Mahito distrusts him but eventually Kiriko persuades them to give working together a try.

Mahito and the heron set out. As they pass through a forest, the heron reveals that thanks to Mahito's arrow, he can't fly and do heron shit anymore - and by magic law, only Mahito can fix the hole. Mahito applies his new woodworking skills to fashion a bung for the hole. The heron tries to stage a top 10 anime betrayal, but then the bung needs more work, so Mahito fixes it, and from that point on, the heron joins the party and he and Mahito are fast friends.

(You might wonder why I just call him 'the heron' and not by a name. He never gets named! He's just the heron man.)

Mahito and the heron arrive at the house of a blacksmith who's supposed to help them find Natsuko, only to find it guarded by big buff parakeet men. The parakeets are splendidly goofy round guys - they remind me of the heedra in Nausicaa. The heron draws the parakeets away, and Mahito enters the house, only to find, uh oh! More parakeets. The parakeets prepare to eat Mahito, who is not carrying a child and therefore fair game unlike Natsuko, but Hisa shows up and burns them with fire magic. She looks just like a young version of Mahito's mum! Funny that. Hisa helps Mahito escape into her house through the fire, and then takes him to infiltrate the parakeets' empire.

In the human world, the maids explain the backstory of the tower to Mahito's dad. It's a weird meteorite that came from space, it turns out, and Mahito's great-uncle built the tower on top of it before eventually disappearing inside. Mahito's dad overprepares in an elaborate getup complete with katana, and goes to try to rescue everyone.

Hisa leads Mahito to a corridor full of doors which open into all the different worlds, including his own world. Mahito briefly glimpses his dad coming to try and rescue him - the two see each other briefly, but the parakeets catch wind of the whole thing and attack, and so Mahito and Hisa have to flee back into the magical world. We see that the parakeet guys turn into regular parakeets when they come into the human world. Mahito's dad becomes convinced he turned into a parakeet.

Mahito and Hisa make their way to the delivery room where Natsuko is resting, waiting to give birth. On their way, lightning starts emerging from the stone - Hisa explains that the stone is sentient and pissed with them. Mahito insists on approaching Natsuko despite this being a huge taboo. They have a heart to heart - Natsuko's mask breaks and she tells Mahito she hates him, while he finally starts calling her mother, as he's assaulted by paper charms that tear at him violently. They part, with Hisa burning the charms to free Mahito, but it's too much and they both pass out.

Mahito dreams of meeting the sorcerer, who stacks irregularly shaped wooden blocks, and explains that stacking the blocks is necessary to maintain the world, buying a few days at a time. The sorcerer reveals the huge flying rock that is the source of his power; he also shows Mahito some blocks, but Mahito somehow divines that these blocks are 'stone for building tombs' and stained with malice. The sorcerer approvingly says this is a good sign for Mahito's ability to succeed him.

While they were asleep, the parakeets have captured Hisa and Mahito. One of them is preparing to eat Mahito, but the heron arrives just in time to save him. They Metal Gear Solid their way through the kingdom while the Parakeet King - a big swaggering guy very like the colonel in Castle in the Sky - goes to press a claim on the wizard, using Hisa and Mahitos' taboo act of entering the delivery room as a bargaining chip. There's some very funny scenes where the parakeets cheer for their king.

Mahito pursues the parakeet king, but the king destroys the staircase behind him, and talks to the sorcerer. The sorcerer is inclined to wave away the transgression, because he wants to let Mahito succeed him, but the parakeet king seems to be bringing him around. I kind of forget how this part went, but the parakeet king goes away from the sorcerer for a bit while Hisa is freed from her prison thing.

Mahito climbs back up with the heron man's help, arriving in the sorcerer's little subplane. The parakeet king quietly follows him, after telling his aides to inform his subjects he was a good king. Mahito approaches the sorcerer, who reveals he has found a new set of blocks, unstained by malice, and again invites Mahito to succeed him. Mahito says that his self-injury is proof of his malice, making him unfit for the job.

At this point, the parakeet king intervenes. Angry at all this sorcerous malarky, he desperately attempts to stack the stones himself, but when they don't stack, he flies into a rage and slices them with his sword. This naturally causes the world to start collapsing, and everyone runs to the doors to escape into the human world.

Mahito has by this point figured out that Hisa is his mum, and he asks if she really wants to go back to their world, knowing that she will very definitely die in a fire not much later. But she is naturally on board with this. Young!Kiriko goes with her, suggesting that she and Hisako entered the magical world at the same time. Meanwhile, Mahito returns to his own time, with Natsuko and the heron. All the various parakeets and pelicans come out through this door too. Old!Kiriko is restored from her apatropaic charm.

As everyone celebrates their safe return (and the appearance of a fuckton of birds), the heron tells Mahito that he ought to forget what happened in the magic world. We skip forward again, with Mahito - now with a baby sibling - setting off to Tokyo. Roll credits!

now let's comment on it

This is not a film that necessarily prioritises an internal logic playing out - new elements enter unexpectedly even quite late in the film. The sorcerer's motivation is murky until late on; the parakeets become major antagonists despite entering only halfway through the film.

There is a certain temptation, knowing how autobiographical this film is, to take it is a roman à clef. Mahito is of course a young Miyazaki; the old sorcerer's concern about finding a successor might be about Miyazaki wondering who should take over Ghibli or if it should just be allowed to die. Under this schema, the parakeets might be Ghibli's legion of fans, or the merchandising empire that prints their designs on every possible product. kvin's article develops this kind of reading, finding some angles I wouldn't have even considered, such as how the idea of weight communicated by the animation factors in to such an allegaroy. It's also something suggested in Miyazaki's own comments about the film, where the sorcerer is Takahata, the heron man is producer Toshio Suzuki...

It definitely helps to know a bit about Miyazaki's background when approaching this film. However, I think it would be reductive to go too far with this kind of reading, and take everything as an allegory for something in Miyazaki's life. The film still has to stand on its own feet!

'Coming of age' is the spin put on it by some outlets, like the BBC. And this is accurate to an extent. The arc of this film is similar to Spirited Away: Mahito starts out sullen and traumatised, but like Chihiro he transitions over the course of his journey in the magical world into the kind of determined Miyazaki protagonist we're used to. On this coming of age angle... well, also like with Chihiro, I don't find the Mahito of the first part of the film especially unsympathetic, his alienation is extremely natural given his situation. Mahito's dad kinda sucks! Living in wartime Japan also really kinda sucks, even if you're the son of a rich dude. But definitely over the course of the film Mahito has a change of heart towards Natsuko, and forms friendships that motivate him to try to protect them. His character arc definitely sees him become 'more prosocial'.

However, there's another angle that's pretty important - the idea of the weight of 'malice', the cursed existences of the pelicans and the like, and the fantasy of building a utopian world that is free of these things. This returns to a theme of Nausicaa, the manga in particular, where Nausicaa discovers that the world she knows - the toxic forest in particular - is actually an elaborate artificial system for cleansing the world of pollutants, that the clean world on the other side will be uninhabitable to her and her people, and that the architects of this system wait in stasis to replace them in this utopian future world. Nausicaa destroys them, commiting instead to an uncertain future.

In Mononoke-hime likewise, we encounter the lepers and former sex workers of Irontown clinging on to the 'cursed' world. Their extractivist project proves incredibly destructive, but the film still regards them sympathetically, and the resolution sees them perhaps finding a new way to live - and San, the feral girl, reconciling herself to the idea of humans.

Here, although the parakeet king forces the decision, Mahito has already declared that he doesn't believe he's fit to oversee a utopia, but instead that his place is in the awful, violent human world.

The film, and the book it's vaguely based on, are titled How do you live? In Japanese, that's a plural 'you' (君たち). There's a lot of ways you could read it, depending on who you take as 'you' - a child asking an adult how to live, or equally a future question of how will you live. This is a lot more explicit in the novel - which I have not read, but here is a summary courtesy of wiki:

Junichi Honda is a fifteen-year-old junior high school student, known by his nickname Koperu, after the astronomer Nicholas Copernicus. He is athletic and academically gifted, and popular at school. Koperu's father, a bank executive, passed away when he was young and he lives with his mother. His uncle (on his mother's side) lives nearby and visits frequently. Koperu and his uncle are very close. Koperu shares about his life and his uncle gives him support and advice. His uncle also documents and comments on these interactions in a diary, with the intent to eventually give the diary to Koperu. The diary writing, which is interspersed with the narrative, provides insight into the ethical and emotional trials that Koperu shared with his uncle. The diary entries, which cover themes such as "view of things", "structure of society", "relation", etc. are in the style of a note written to Koperu.[8]

Thinking like Copernicus that our Earth is a celestial body moving within the vastness of space, or thinking that our Earth is fixed at the center of the universe, are two ways of thinking that, in reality, are not only related to astronomy. Even when we think about things like the world around us or our own lives, the truth is that we are still revolving around them after all.

In the end, Koperu writes a decision on his future way of living as a reply to his uncle, and the novel ends with the narrator asking the question "how do you live?" to the reader.

The author of the novel was a socialist, who had been imprisoned by the nationalist government, and wrote the book intending to impart lessons on ethics. The version of his book published after the war was heavily edited to strip the book of political content. But it's also, perhaps paradoxically, a book that centres on very wealthy characters, aimed narrowly at educated boys, though it became a widely read classic.

Studio Ghibli's films, from both Miyazaki and Takahata, have a habit of being framed as imparting something to the younger generation - something the pair seem to have seen as a mission all the way back in the days of Panda Kopanda. For example, while Grave of the Fireflies is seen as the classic tragic war movie, for Takahata it was also aimed at criticising what he saw as the careless, consumerist generation of the 80s; the stubborn arrogance of the protagonist supposed to reflect on this. It's an attitude that also emerges in their comments about Chihiro. And, indeed, one of the first things we heard about How Do You Live? was that it was aimed towards Miyazaki's grandson - and more broadly towards that generation.

So what does this film have to say to the younger generations? Let's have a look at it from Mahito's POV.

For Mahito, the adults in his life are all pretty complicated. His father is enthusiastic and well-meaning but incredibly oblivious to what his son is going through (we might recall some of what Miyazaki wrote about his father in Starting Point, describing him as basically a grifter). Natsuko is masking pretty hard, trying to play the role of Good New Mum and connect to her newly acquired son, but there's an intrinsic distance. It is understandable that Mahito would want to reject them.

Mahito is... not entirely a passive character, he goes to some efforts to for example fashion the bow and arrow and repair the heron man's beak, but mostly he is pulled around by the plot into a strange world he doesn't understand. At first, his instinct is to retreat, even to the point of self-injury. Once he arrives in the magical world, he has acquired something of a purpose (finding Natsuko), but he gets pushed into near-disaster situations (the pelicans piling up to push him through the gate at the tomb) or stumbles into circumstances where something is expected of him (hey kid, gut this fish!). Gradually though his exposure to this world pulls him out of his shell. He runs into conflicts and injustices that seem intractable - the wareware and the pelicans - and has little power to intervene except to bury the bodies.

Eventually, he gets to carry out his main objective - finding Natsuko - but despite finally deciding to accept Natsuko as his new mother, he finds himself rejected, not just by her but also by the earth. Perhaps feeling responsible for getting her into trouble, his new objective becomes rescuing freshly-damsel'd Hisa. But now new adults want things of him - his great-uncle has decided he'd make a fine successor. Mahito has to make a decision here about what relationships he wants to commit to, what sort of life he wants to build - and he chooses the world he found so alienating at the outset of the film, the one which hurt him by taking his mother, not to the secondary-world fantasy.

It could be a 'this world is all we have' sort of statement, perhaps. But also the last act of the film feels like it gets a bit caught up in Castle in the Sky-style adventure-story beats.

I do feel like some aspects of the film ended up a little underbaked - which is an odd thing to say because it's not a short film and there is so much in it already. But Hisa for example - she's got badass powers and all, but I feel we barely get a chance to get a sense of what motivates her. Why did she enter the fantasy world? She acts at first like she doesn't know Mahito is her future son, but rapidly becomes incredibly devoted to him (in a way that reads a little romancey lmao). So much of her screen time is dedicated to having her convey the secrets of the world that it's hard to get a bead on her as a person.

Likewise, Natsuko - why did she enter this world to have her baby in this special ritual delivery chamber? She clearly knows more than most of the characters, but she gets kind of sidelined after Mahito confronts her, with wizard shit becoming more central. The animation does such a fantastic job of selling her feelings in the first part of the film that it feels like a shame that she drifts away at the end.

The progression of the film feels rather like a dream, where everything is arranged by symbolic significance to Mahito. It makes sense... on a magical level, where the secondary world is shaped primarily by parallels in the real one. So the tiny apatropaic statues of the old ladies protect him because they represent the role the real old ladies have in his life. Hisa has fire magic because Hisako died in a fire. Once Mahito has come to his personal resolutions about returning to the world, the magical one is no longer needed, and it collapses.

This is not such an uncommon role for magic in a story. In Miyazaki's own works, we have Totoro and Spirited Away, where a magical world provides direction or relief to a child's real struggles. Or take for example Okiura's film A Letter To Momo, in which the three yōkai recognise taking care of the grieving Momo as their explicit purpose as spirits. This magical world comes to Mahito to help him come to terms with losing his mother, and reorient himself towards living in a painful world.

Meanwhile, the sorcerer, whether he be Miyazaki or Takahata, is quite a distant figure. He may maintain the magical world by stacking his blocks, may be the authority which factions within it must plead to, but he also rules from afar in a vast empty palace full of long halls and open air spaces. His main company seems to be a big fucking rock, with which he made a 'contract'. He's generally handling it a bit better than, say, Ushiromiya Kinzo - he receives the parakeet king with good humour - but he's a pretty flawed god of his little world. So much of this world seems to pre-exist him, it's not something he constructed. Still, when he shows up, you pretty much have to do what he says.

If this is about Miyazaki's relation to Takahata, it seems like quite a sad portrayal. But 'unapproachable patriarch' does sorta describe their role in the studio from what I understand (c.f. Oshii's infamous article comparing them to the Kremlin).

When it comes to the question of who should succeed Miyazaki, we should probably consider the matter of Yoshifumi Kondō, who was being set up as the next big Ghibli director until his untimely death - which allegedly Takahata was willing to accept the blame for. The mythology built up around Miyazaki and Takahata is double-edged.

Here are some rather startling comments from Toshiyuki Inoue's interview. Inoue is one of the most impressive animators who ever lived in my book, the other star of the realist line besides Okiura. Just have a look at his booru page: iconic scenes from GitS, Akira, Millenium Actress; even in more recent films, he pretty much carried Maquia, and steals the show with his scenes in Miss Hokusai.

And yet even he was intimidated to be working alongside Miyazaki when he first came on board for Kiki's Delivery Service, fresh off Akira:

I believe you’ve always been a fan of Miyazaki’s, why were you scared to work with him? Toshiyuki Inoue: I had heard quite a few scary stories. A lot of acquaintances had worked on Nausicaä, Laputa and Totoro before that, so I knew how scary he could be when he got angry – I had heard stories of people being fired mid-production, things like that. How was it actually? Toshiyuki Inoue: Not as scary as I had imagined. He’d only rarely scream in the studio. But he did get angry. I’d sometimes be called to some separate room and lectured alongside Kōji Morimoto and Masaaki Endō. It felt like being in school all over again.

'Only rarely'. Honestly. Inoue describes how difficult it was for him to adapt his logical, analytical style to Ghibli's stretchy, bouncy characters - and how Miyazaki would disparage him if he, for example, drew a ship inaccurately.

For Inoue, coming back to How Do You Live was something like a 'return match'. He talks about how an older Miyazaki was no longer able to strictly correct the animation, and in general age was limiting him, but he still feels that Miyazaki is fundamentally superior:

Toshiyuki Inoue: I’ve always wished for a return match or a way to redeem myself. But even if I say that, I know I can’t even pretend to rival Miyazaki. I just can’t win. He’s extremely smart and learned, and on top of that, as an animator he always transcends common sense: he’s so talented that I know very well there’s nothing I can do against it. The more I learn about him, the more I realize I’ll never be on that level.

Miyazaki's genius is undeniable, but man... it's not a good mindset to cultivate if you want to find a successor lmao. If even Inoue doesn't feel he can measure up, who the hell could?

Mind you, it does rather seem that Miyazaki had mellowed out by the point of How Do You Live?. Here's Yamashita:

Akihiko Yamashita: As I said, the core of an animator’s job is to follow what the director asks, so whenever I had trouble with that, I’d go see Miyazaki to show him my roughs. He’d advise me on the things that were missing and reassure me about those that were good. He really helped me to gain more confidence in myself.

Reading these interviews underlines pretty hard that we shouldn't get too caught up in the mythology of Miyazaki the mighty auteur. While the story may be all on Miyazaki, and most of the character designs (with the notable exception of Natsuko)... so much of the details of the animation, the stuff that really makes this film land, is primarily shaped by everyone else - Honda in particular, but also the individual key animators who interpreted his scenes. I really need to get my hands on a copy of that Industrial History of Studio Ghibli book to get a less Miyazaki-centric perspective on the studio's history.

I do not feel, having come out of this film, any closer to knowing the answer to that eternally pressing question of how do you live - I guess I'm still working out my answer to that one, and I will be until I die. And maybe that's rather the point. I think this film still carries some of the flaws of Miyazaki's later films - despite having so many iconic scenes, it doesn't quite seem to know where it's going. But I am so glad to have seen this in the theatre (I saw it at the Prince Charles theatre in Soho with friends, the theatre was completely packed!), and glad Miyazaki managed to get this one out before he goes. Whatever happens to Ghibli without its sorcerer, it's been a hell of a thing to witness.

#anime #the boy and the heron #how do you live #studio ghibli #hayao miyazaki #film

[weebsinstash]

Alright bestie I’m on that shit again

So yandere Superman, right? Like obviously your fucked. The only other yandere in existence that might just be able to keep you from him is Batman, but even then he’d probably sooner work together just to ensure your safety- but that’s a prompt for another day.

Back to yan Superman, imagine you’re his darling and he is “keeping you safe”. But one day, you get snatched up by some organization that wants to use you as leverage or some shit, but you are just sobbing in relief at maybe being free- only to have Superman show up and do some not so super things to everyone who “stole” you

There are just so many casually horrifying things about Superman that people don't realize until you start like digging into his lore. "Oh he's super strong and a super fast flyer" actually he can do basically anything at those super speeds to the point he can literally even PROCESS THOUGHTS at near light-speed which means he has Absolutely Terrifying reaction times and can make plans and schemes on a dime, which, you know, can be even better utilized by him being intelligent. He has natural invulnerability so if you throw a punch at him too hard you could literally shatter the bones in your hand and he can't even control that, like you could literally hurt yourself with him on accident! He can see across INSANE DISTANCES and his x-ray vision doesn't have like a set range so he could do anything from, peep inside buildings to spy on you, to looking under your clothing for any bruises or injuries or even self harm marks, to peeking behind your hero disguise to learn your true identity, to seeing if there's anything inside your stomach and seeing if you're eating properly. Like jesus christ he literally found out Lois was pregnant from waking up one morning and suddenly hearing the heartbeat of the FETUS, there's literally nothing from him pulling that stereotypical "I know you're nervous or lying or afraid because I can literally hear your heartbeat increase" scary bullshit

And let's talk about Lois for a sec because my god her death was literally what kicked off the Injustice timeline? And there are other forms of Superman media where she just straight up dies naturally of cancer! Sure we could take the easy way and say "in this au Lois never existed or was just Clark's friend and he loved YOU" (which is my preferred default tbh bc, no competition for Reader lol) but I mean if you're going for that angst, that real whump, a yandere Clark Kent that just lost his wife/unborn child to either the Injustice incident or cancer, now overcome with grief? And in those cancer timelines they usually already have a son, Jonathan, and sometimes Jordan, and here's Clark thinking, well, his boy needs a mother, and he's got these weird feelings for you, and lil Jonny clearly has affection for you, maybe bring a bit of a platonic yan himself who sees you as either a big sister or even a secondary mom, so... be his wife maybe?

Like my god if Reader somehow helped him through the grief of losing Lois and managed to avoid "fully activating" Superman's anime villain arc, like he's going full fascist in the Injustice 2 Bad Ending, then some shit DEFINITELY goes down when Reader gets taken away. It just reactivates all his trauma. No! He can't lose anyone else! Jonathan can't lose anyone else! You're not just someone he loves, you're his FRIEND!

You're just huddled in whatever cell you've been kept in with your black eyes and bruises and knuckles bloodied from trying to fight back when you hear Clark's voice and you look up with excitement that just falls immediately off your face because holy shit did he just unlock that thumbprint scanner with a severed arm, and suddenly you're realizing there are other shades of red on his costume and dripping from his fingers

I can only imagine like, ngl I considered a sequel to my fic Doubt where Reader escapes the manor and runs into Supernan as the only other person who can protect you, so here we would have the inverse: you're the only one who knows about Clark's increasing instability and, while you still have your own freedom and autonomy, try to speak to Bruce about it, and now you have Batman Vs Superman: Competing For Your Heart Edition. I can only imagine what sort of unhinged reactions there would be if you think you've got Batman alone and you're beginning to cry all "Bruce I'm really worried about Clark, he isn't acting like himself, there's something wrong with him" and. Clark is like literally using his x-ray vision to read lips through the walls if he can't use his super hearing to outright eavesdrop.

Of course as you suggested, I'm always a slut for ideas with"oh shit I ran to this guy to help me and he's ALSO crazy, now they're teaming up and I'm in some weird shared/poly situation with TWO nutjobs". Lmao you go to Bruce concerned about Kal and Bruce goes to confront him and Clark just drops "did you know Y/N has been hiding self harm cuts under their hero suit also wow they smoke HELLA weed and im worried about their lungs and all the stuff they do when they're alone that no one else knows about 🥺" and suddenly here's Bruce " thanks i hate this actually :)" and there's a scheme concted to spy on you or move you elsewhere.

I've even thought of "Reader oh nooOoooOo, that, giant monster or villain attack or whatever also coincidentally destroyed your shitty little apartment complex? You mean Clark 'accidently' got sent flying into your building or smacked some giant creature into it and now you don't have a place to live? And you're broke too? Oh no 🥺 Well, BATMAN has this nice big house with lots of room in for you to stay toooootally 'temporarily', we PROMISE uwu"

Batman is the one who can put a tracking chip injected into your skin or even disguised as a filling in one of your teeth, and Superman is the one who can zoom off to rescue you/retrieve you "faster than a speeding bullet". I think one of the only people who could bring them down together at that point would be like. Fucking DARKSEID and, Jesus no, you definitely don't want HIM treating you as a pet 😭 the evil Batman that was brainwashed by him in the Apokolips War movie was scary enough (and scary HOT, lmao, let him keep me as some sort of prize and the only luxury Darkseid will allow him as a reward for his obedience. Lord Batman goes from having a meeting talking about like enslaving people to returning to his quarters and railing tf outta you because he's still holding onto some slim vestiges of humanity where he cares about you but also using you as his personal anti stress fuck toy)

#yandere superman #yandere batman #yandere dc #i got a draft whee damian and jon like you and introduce you to their fathers #and suddenly stalking you becomes a family affair #the boys walk you home and jon lies about having to pee so damian can plant bugs while youre distracted #the boys going back to their fathers and telling them all of your personal business #'yeah dad when she was at work i used my xray vision and saw her creepy manager grope her in the walk in' #suddenly your small little privately owned cafe was just bought out by wayne enterprises and your boss is fired or goes missing #maybe Bruce gets you a job st Wayne tech bc hes been following you as batman and he doesnt like you working third ahift #lmao heres hoping i actually finish it wven though im not quite sure where to go w it yet #but like its literally over 8 pages at least so. obviously some sort of creative juices are flowing #yandere stuff #sinprompts #at this point i cant promise shit bc my emotions and motivation are waaaaaacky

[thatgirlstrawberry]

Not-so-happy Hotch pt. 2

In which Y/N and Spencer are in a predicament

Warnings: kinda smut, fluff, angst, bodily liquid getting on clothing (if you know what I mean🤭), mean Hotch, Derek being a teaser, lmk if I missed anything!!

Spencer Reid x fem!hotch!reader

This picture was made by @thbidkbutok

•*. •*.

“Y/N, Hotch is going to kill me.” He groaned, pressing his fingers against the dark purple marks littered all over his neck and chest. He stood there in the mirror with nothing but his boxers on.

It was true. Hotch would absolutely kill him. Truth is, Y/N got a little carried away the night before. “I’m sorry! I swear, I didn’t mean to that!”

He chuckled. “How do you accidentally bite someone?”

“Like this!” She leaned over and bit his bicep gently. He jumped a bit and looked at her.

“No, but seriously. You might wanna start planning my funeral.” He said, fingers ghosting over the hickies.

Y/N rolled her eyes and smiled. “Oh shut up and wear a turtleneck!” She giggled, kissing his shoulder.

.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.

It was hard to keep her hands off of Spencer when they walked into the building every day. And he knew it was hard for her. She craved the feeling of his mmm. So, he decided that they’d leave early so they they could still have time for each other’s company and live in the morning before they’d walk into work. Sometimes they’d drink coffee and eat donuts and sometimes they’d just full on fuck in the backseat.

Today was one of those days.

Her breathless moans filled the entire car. “Fuck, Spencer!” She cried, her nails scraping down his back. He relentlessly drilled into her over and over again. Her hands clenched his biceps as his arms held him over her, gripping the door behind her.

“Y/N/N, I’m so close—“ He grunted out, one hand coming from behind her head to rest on her chin, thumb rubbing her bottom lip.

“Spence, I’m gonna c-“ Before she could even get the words out of her mouth, her hot release came and she squeezed her eyes shut, feeling Spencer pull out. They forgot to restock the car condoms.

Soon, he finished and Y/N gasped when she realized that he accidentally came all over her blouse. “Spencer!” He blushed a dark shade of pink.

“Oh shit! Baby, I’m so sorry! Oh my— do you have another work shirt?” She shook her head as he climbed off of her, pulling up his pants.

She inhaled deeply and looked at him. “Remember those shirts I bought us for your birthday?” She asked, a small embarrassed smile on her face. “They’re still in the trunk.”

He tilted his head and parted his lips. “Y/N, you can’t wear that in there!” He shook his head. “Your dad will actually kill me. For real this time.”

“Would you rather me go in there with your cum all over my shirt or would you rather me go in there wearing a shirt with the word daddy on it?” She asked, tearing off the shirt that she was wearing.

“Y/N, i really don’t think this is a good idea.” He grabbed her arm as she went to get out of the car.

She turned back to him. “Spencer, I couldn’t care less what my dad thinks. If he fires me, he fires me. I’m not a child. That’s on him, okay?” He sighed.

“Well… if you’re gonna wear yours…” He drew out, closing his eyes, not actually believing he was about to walk into the BAU in a T-shirt.

Y/N gave him a small smile and leaned forward to give him a big, passionate kiss. “I love you, Spencer Reid.”

“I obviously love you more.” He joked, climbing out of the car so she didn’t have to get out half naked.

.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.

In their line of work, yes, there was a dress code. But seeing as the particular circumstances prevented them from dressing appropriately, they walked hand in hand into the bullpen.

Y/N avoided any and all eye contact that might have been made with her because her shirt said “BUT DADDY I LOVE HIM” her entire body was hot.

Spencer looked red as a tomato with “My Girlfriend is Hotter than you” plastered in all caps across his shirt.

Derek glanced up from his desk he’s leaned on for just a second. But then, his head slowly lifted back up. His eyebrows increasingly furrowed, his face full of concern.

He read Y/N’s shirt first before looking at Spencer’s. “What… the… hell.” He kicked off of his desk and hurried in front of them. “What are you guys… wearing!?” He asked, trying his hardest not to laugh.

Y/N pushed a finger to her lips. “Shhh! Derek, if you get me in trouble, I will hurt you!” She whispered harshly.

Spencer just nodded his head. “There was an incident… and this was all she had in the car.” He said, glancing at the floor repeatedly.

Derek squinted. “Wait a minute…” He drew out. “You two were doin’ it in the car, weren’t you!?” He asked, eyes widening.

Y/N clenched her jaw and rolled her eyes. “Shut up! I will actually punch you in the throat— oh shit, here comes Rossi.” She dropped Spencer’s hand and folded hers in front of her.

“Sweetheart! You’re h—“ He stopped and furrowed his eyebrows. “What the hell are you two wearing?”

Y/N heated even more and she looked up at Spencer. “I’m beginning to think the other shirt was a better idea.”

The other two began asking each other questions and snickering about the shirts. Emily and JJ and Penelope also joined when they saw then couple.

Her breath hitched when her father’s office door opened and he stepped out. Spencer was busy looking at the very interesting floor when he came closer. “What’s going on over here?” Hotch asked, joining the group that surrounded his daughter and her boyfriend.

He eyed both of them with a stone cold look and then looked at what they were were wearing. “Office.” He turned right back around and headed towards his previous place. He paused and realized that he didn’t hear any footsteps behind him. “Now.”

Y/N inhaled deeply and grabbed Spencer’s hand, pulling him with her behind her father. He was silent until they reached his office.

They went in and sat in the chairs immediately, feeling like a couple of kids who got called to the principal’s office. “Okay, I’m just gonna say it…” He sighed, sitting in his chair. “You thought it was appropriate to wear shirts with words on them to work? The word d-daddy and girlfriend are not appropriate here, you do understand that, right?”

“I spilled coffee on my shirt.” Y/N lied, thinking her excuse would suffice.

Hotch narrowed his eyes and looked at Spencer. “And what happened to his shirt?”

She swallowed. “I also… spilled coffee on his shirt.” Her nod concluded her second lie.

Hotch inhaled and popped his eyebrows up. “Okay.” He shrugged. “Find new clothes and get to work.” He commanded. Y/N rolled her eyes and Spencer got up quickly, leaving the room.

Y/N got up as well but her father called to her. “Y/N?”

“Yes?” She answered.

“If you wanna be a behavior analyst, I suggest you learn how to lie better.”

———————————————

Yuuuuuh pt. 2!!!

Love @thbidkbutok for requesting this!!!

Thanks for reading bbgs!!! Love ya bunches!!

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#spencer reid #spencer fluff #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid smut #criminal minds imagine #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x original female character #criminal minds #spencer x oc #spencer x reader #crimimal minds #spencer x you #love your body

[i-love-invincible]

Let's Talk About Atom Eve

Invincible Spoilers and Gore CW Abound! Please watch this incredible series... So who is ATOM EVE?

I would love to talk about this, but first we have to talk about character design in Invincible. The costumes, personalities, and heroes of Invincible are all self-referential. Take the Guardians of the Globe for instance, the first heroes we see on-screen.

We see these people, and IMMEDIATELY we get what they're about... even if these characters are new to us, we KNOW who they are. Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Batman, Green Lantern, all obvious parodies and fun little characters.

I'm sure your eyes will start glazing over once I go "blah blah subverting tropes blah blah absolute genius." but one thing that Invincible does very well is destroying the audience's connections with established superhero tropes (See the one million white boy video essayists talking about why Evil Superman is awesome.) The reason why the slaughter of the Guardians of the Globe in that fucking THREE MINUTE LONG SCENE is so surprising is because THEY ARE THE FUCKING JUSTICE LEAGUE (while the fight scene also conveniently tosses some casual shade to DC Comics.) Not only is it stunning since we have some frame of reference for how powerful they are, but also stunning because we have ALREADY become attached to these characters.

What follows are a couple real quotes from people I've shown the first episode to: "Oh Batman + Silver Surfer that's awesome!" "OH DUDE! FISH AQUAMAN" "Wonder Woman but she's a lesbian.. as she should be..." .. and all these people, the ones with the most superhero experience, were the ones all most taken aback by the ending.

So let's look at Eve.

At first glance, we get the same impression as a lot of the heroes we meet in Invincible: knockoff. In the same way Omniman and the entirety of the Guardians of the Globe are made to resemble the Superman and the Justice League so to does Atom Eve's costume and powers SCREAM token. She is the first female hero we meet that is Mark's age and perhaps more importantly (and more evident to a first-time viewer) she has some very clear themes of femininity. Such as her costume, which Doc Seismic callously points out in Episode 3 (neglecting the fact she designed her own costume)...

... as well as her name. "Atom Eve" is a combination of her ability to influence atoms and her middle name, but it is also a reference to Adam and Eve (see the bible.) She even has a female symbol with two revolving electrons around it emblazoned right on her damn shirt. So just like the Guardians of the Globe, her design is meant to carry a lot of weight and immediacy to the viewer, you see them and you understand who they are and what they stand for (or at least you think you do.)

So we've seen the way that the Guardians subvert our expectations so how does Eve diverge from the audience's first-impressions? Well for the first couple episodes she doesn't. You might even suspect her of being some one-dimensional, neglected and under-characterized female character (and to be honest if you were reading the comics you wouldn't be too far off...) until you start to see her dissatisfied with being a superhero. Her boyfriend cheats on her, the Teen Team breaks up, her parents consistently disrespect and talk down to her, she's misunderstood by the naive and silly Mark Grayson, and she struggles to find connection with anyone outside of when she's "beating up bad guys." She even goes as far as to reject a position in the Guardians of the Globe just to avoid her ex-boyfriend, despite her killer tryout.

She's frustrated by the frame that's been left for her, and realizes her powers enable her to do much more than beat up random villains. Her powers BY THE WAY, which up until now anyone could have mistaken for "shooting pink stuff," is actually atomic manipulation. She can just fucking rearrange matter to make anything she wants. So instead of being a superhero she fucks off to do things that ACTUALLY help people. Like idk she could be irrigating rivers and feeding the starving or like manufacturing free medicine or something. Atom Eve is a hero who is chronically misunderstood by literally everyone around her, even in the final episode Mark is under the impression Eve just stopped being a superhero to get away from her ex, parents, and school. However with the earth-shattering familial trauma that Mark goes through in the Season 1 finale, maybe they will have more in-common than either of them think.

and NOW there's a surprise ATOM EVE SPECIAL EPISODE! it shows off her origin story which goes even more in-depth into her trauma, and her loss of the only people who even WOULD be capable of understanding her. It also has my FAVORITE FIGHT SCENE OF ALL TIME!!! It was absolutely incredible

ps: omg why tf did they make her far-shot model have an x over the female symbol instead of the detailed electrons (crying emoji) cool i didnt proofread this okay i might do more of these okay bye, i love this show okay

#invincible #invincible show #atom eve #invincible spoilers #cw: gore

[alexander-arcturus-black-lupin]

Morpheus confesses

Morpheus was in his throne room doing his best to fix the dreaming or at least that's what he told himself. In fact the dreaming had already been fixed; he was just busying himself from thinking.

About her. 

His human.

The one thing that was out of his control. 

She felt her heart racing as Morpheus moved his body against hers. His touch was gentle and passionate, a perfect mix of intensity and tenderness. He caressed her body, his hands exploring her curves as he moved in slow, sensuous circles. His touch sent electric shocks of pleasure through her body, igniting a spark of desire within her.

She moaned in pleasure as Morpheus's hands moved lower, exploring her most intimate of areas. He teased her with gentle strokes, his fingers tracing circles around her sweet spot. The pleasure built within her, and Y/N's breathing grew faster as Morpheus's touch intensified.

Suddenly it stopped. She was in bed, alone.

“What the absolute hell,” Y/n felt her thighs clench together, her breathing shallow and her legs felt numb.

“My apologies,” y/n’s neck snapped to find the dream lord at the door, closing it.

“What? I-”

“Ever since you came to the dreaming,” He paused as though weighing his words. “My powers have been a little out of my control,”

“Were you really here,” Was she really about to have sex with this man

“No, that was a shade or a dream figure if you will” he seemed to avoid her eyes as he spoke looking intently at the chair in the corner. 

“But it was…”

“Real as a dream can be, yes” His replies were short and curt. Although there was a subtle blush on his cheeks. “You are in the dreaming of course, again i apologies, I-"

"Is that why you've been ignoring me," it seemed as though he didn’t count on your question as he looked over at you or well in your direction but his eyes weren’t on you, the moon lighting up a part of his face. He was ethereal in every light. 

“Yes, it has.” You remained silent as he stood there. “Is that all of your questions,’ his voice soft and alluring. 

“I um, if my presence had been affecting you, why am I still here?” His eyes left yours as he contemplated the question. 

“I do not know,” He made no motion to sit down, he just stood there, “Do you wish to leave?”

“My answer depends on your comfort Morpheus, if you feel my presence is revolting-”

“But it is not,” He pauses again. “It’s like a breath of fresh air in a room filled with stale air,” 

“Then why won’t you look at me?” Morpheus glances at you and the light shade of pink on his face deepens

“Y/n, you are not decent,” you look in the mirror near your bed and you notice, your mess of hair, your nightgown, ridden up your thighs, the sheets a mess. 

“I do look quite a mess bu-”

“It’s not that you don’t look a mess, it’s that fact I’m not the one who messed you up,” a small gasp escaped your mouth. “I’m not the one who’s made you clench your legs, I’m not the one who made you-” he stops. “It was rather a mere shade.”

“Morpheus,” you whisper out. 

“Tell me to leave,” he says abruptly.

“What?”

“Tell me to leave, tell me to close the door on the way out,” Morpheus looks at the window. “Tell me you don’t want me to be here,” you don’t say anything as you get out of the bed. You don’t stop until you’re right in front of him. 

“Morpheus, I want you to stay,” you move closer as Morpheus moved back a step. 

“Starlight…” he hadn’t called her that in a long time. “I can’t”

“Why,”

“None of my past courtships have ever been successful, and I wish not to ruin what little we have,” 

“Morpheus,” You reached up and place your hand on his chest feeling his heartbeat. “For an endless you’re heart beats rather quickly,’

“Starlight I-” Want to see where this goes? Want to know whether you can actually stay or not, want to know whether I want to kiss you or not

“Can I kiss you,” his voice is down to a whisper. “Please,”

“I’d like that,” One of his rare smiles peak throught and he kiss you, it’s soft and slow. His hands snaked your waist bringing you in closer and holding you steady. 

“Can we do this for all eternity,”

“Yes”

#morpheus x you smut #morpheus x black reader #morpheus x reader #morpheus smut #morpheus #lord morpheus #morpheus x y/n #morpheus x you #morpheus fanfiction #Morpheus fanfic

[wuxianxkexing]

Mu Qing x Reader: Stop Fucking With My Cat Part 4

-------------------------------------------------

Y/N stood bleary-eyed in front of the gates to Ling Wen's palace. A few of the early bird Heavenly Officials happily stood around talking to each other but Y/N absolutely wanted no part of it this early in the morning. She carefully kept her distance, not caring at all if the others found it rude. They were the rude ones for being so loud this early. Plus Mu Qing was also there in the very front of the line, though he wasn't really talking to anyone. Y/N wasn't really in the mood to get yelled at again. Last night Xie Lian had told her that Mu Qing's cultivation path valued purity over all else and that he probably hated her for putting that demonic collar on his cat. As if a collar that can allow cats to speak would turn a regular cat into a demon just because a demon wore it. But whatever, plenty of people didn't understand things like that. Besides, what pet owner in their right mind wouldn't want a pet that could talk back to them? It was a shame that the collar didn't work the way that Y/N wanted it to.

The crowd of waiting Heavenly Officials slowly grew larger as Y/N stole glances at Mu Qing. What a pain in the ass the entire thing was and yes, it was entirely her fault, but was it really /that/ bad? It's not like she was going to steal anything from his palace, and she had been playing with Echo for weeks. She only got bold enough to go into Mu Qing's garden because Echo would meow at her incessantly and walk back and forth until one day she followed him. He obviously wanted to play in the garden with her, and while they would always meet in front of Mu Qing's palace gates in the beginning it eventually became their ritual that Y/N would just go into the garden to find Echo whenever she passed by. It was like that cat had an extra sense and would come out meowing at her indignantly if she ever tried to pass by without saying hello. It was kind of weird actually, but also super cute. Y/N smiled and giggled to herself.

Unbeknownst to Y/N Mu Qing was also stealing glances at her. He frowned seeing her smile and giggle to herself. She didn't seem to feel guilty at all. Demonic cultivators were universally not morning people, preferring to operate at night and avoid the sun much like real demons. A side effect of their cultivation. But that explained why she was to the side underneath the shade of a tree even though she should be further up in line than she currently was. Several Heavenly Officials had already cut line in front of her. He tsked to himself. She was probably just trying to delay the inevitable. The doors to Ling Wen's palace finally opened and Mu Qing was the first to stroll inside. He rolled his eyes as he thought he would get his merits from her one way or another.

Y/N remained outside lost in thought, never realizing that the palace had finally opened. It wasn't until she felt a firm kick to her shin that she came back to reality with a startled frown and furrowed brows. The offender was none other than Mu Qing, who stood in front of her looming down with a cold expression. Y/N resisted the urge to slap him. He'd probably go crying to Ling Wen to make her owe even more merits to him. Instead she gave him a forced small smile and greeted him politely. "Good morning General Xuan Zhen."

"We have a mission together in the southeastern swamps." Y/N died on the inside but kept her expression blank.

"Oh, ok! What do we have to do?"

"There's a large village where an abnormal amount of children keep on disappearing into the swamps, never to be seen again. So far there have been 15 victims, all children old enough to know better than to wander too far. For some reason Ling Wen thinks that I need your help." Mu Qing rolled his eyes in disgust.

"She probably just wants you to train me." Y/N smiled and waved her hand in an attempt to placate him. "I am still rather new so she doesn't know exactly what I can and can't handle yet. Thank you for coming to assist me." Mu Qing rolled his eyes again. Obviously her attempt at flattery hadn't exactly hit the mark. Y/N was pretty sure that actually was the reason Ling Wen assigned them both to this mission but for some Mu Qing seemed to think otherwise. Y/N briefly wondered if maybe General Xuan Zhen wasn't as powerful as he was rumored to be, but quickly dismissed the thought. He must just have the habit of taking things the wrong way. With the length of time he has been in the Heaven's and the number of temples he has there is no way that General Xuan Zhen doesn't live up to his reputation. Humans are too fickle to continue to worship a God that doesn't deliver. "Well I'm ready when you are."

"Let's get this over with then." Mu Qing crossed his arms and scowled. He began to lead the way to the outskirts of heaven and Y/N followed quietly. Welp this is probably going to be a fun mission, Y/N thought as she silently rolled her eyes to herself.

What a bunch of bullshit, Mu Qing thought to himself as he paced ever faster to the outskirts. This brat owes me merits and yet I'm having to help her get them for me? What kind of sense does that even make? Fucking Ling Wen. He stopped abruptly at the end of the Heaven's and pointed downwards. "That is the place we are going." Y/N peered over the edge and confirmed the spot before jumping down. Mu Qing froze with his mouth agape and watched in horror as Y/N fell. Technically yes, that was one way to get down but what the fuck?! Heaven's help me, Mu Qing prayed desperately before drawing a teleportation array. He wasn't going to follow in that idiots path.

Mere seconds later Mu Qing appeared next to a bruised and battered Y/N who was laying like a dead person on the ground. Her robes were torn and dirty and bloody. "Have fun?" Mu Qing smirked. Y/N looked up at Mu Qing with an incredulous look. That bastard looked perfect! "We normally use teleportation arrays just so you know. No wonder Ling Wen wanted me to train you, but I'm afraid you might be untrainable since you apparently have no sense."

Y/N grunted as she struggled to right herself. Mu Qing merely watched her struggle with laughter in his eyes. What a gentleman, Y/N bitterly thought. After righting herself she examined the state of her robes. Her left sleeve had a long tear in it from getting caught on something during her descent and she had a few blood spatters from a shallow wound, but nothing too bad. Y/N was red from embarrassment. Xie Lian always jumped down from the Heaven's like that, he never told her that they could use teleportation arrays to descend! But she wasn't about to admit that to Mu Qing. "I'm alright, that was fun!" Y/N tried to sound like it actually was fun but she wasn't able to hide how bitter she actually was. Mu Qing snorted and began to walk away, leaving Y/N to painfully limp after him. Normally Mu Qing would be a bit more sympathetic but Y/N was a martial Goddess, she should be able to walk it off, plus she did it to herself. Like he expected after a few hundred yards Y/N's gait returned to normal and they quietly made their way to the village.

During her days as a cultivator Y/N became very used to striking up conversations with strangers to investigate incidents, so she was kind of miffed when Mu Qing cut her conversation with a middle aged street vendor selling radishes short and verbally ushered her along. As they made their way through the large village Mu Qing shut down every attempt she made to gather information. How were they supposed to solve these disappearances if she couldn't gather information? It was a struggle to keep her temper down. Even though Mu Qing was the leader of this mission and probably had a plan he didn't bother to inform her of them and Y/N was used to having free reign to do whatever she wanted. It would be one thing if he wanted to do the interrogating himself but he made no attempt to do so either. It felt to Y/N like they were goofing off on a stroll rather than taking their mission seriously. Y/N's mind went back to Mu Qing's previous comment 'For some reason Ling Wen thinks I need your help'. Maybe Mu Qing slacked off on missions and he did need her help to keep on track. It would make sense with the lie she told Ling Wen the day she first met Mu Qing. Y/N crossed her arms and sighed. She wasn't opposed to slacking off, but she also believed that they should do that /after/ they defeated whatever was plaguing this village. Lives were at stake, and more importantly the lives of innocent /children/ were at stake. She glared at Mu Qing, who apparently felt her disapproving stare because he turned around and glared right back at her. "What is your problem?" He demanded.

"When are we going to actually get started on this mission? We can look at the village after we defeat whatever is here. We need to start interrogating people here to figure out what is going on."

Mu Qing rolled his eyes. "We don't need to interrogate anyone. I have a temple here, all we need to do is go there and listen to the prayers from my followers for a while. It will be a lot more efficient than seeking out random people who may or may not know anything. My followers will naturally tell me everything that they know." Y/N's face lighted up at his explanation. Of course! She felt kind of bad for doubting him earlier. General Xuan Zhen was known to be very efficient.

"Oh! Where is your palace?"

"Not far from here." Mu Qing turned and continued to lead the way. They finally came to his palace on the outskirts of the village and Y/N was honestly kind of impressed. It was a very attractive looking palace and the statue inside looked exactly like him! Y/N herself didn't have any proper temples but instead numerous small shrines that people typically kept inside their homes for personal use. It was the way that demonic Gods and Goddesses were traditionally worshipped. Mu Qing commanded her to make herself invisible to mortals and Y/N complied. He sat himself down right in front of his statue, invisible to the eyes of mortals, and began listening to the numerous silent prayers of his worshippers. Y/N grew bored of standing there watching him so she began to wander around his temple, touching things that she probably shouldn't but they were all so pretty. Offerings of gold, incense and fruit filled this temple. Y/N was kind of jealous. His worshippers here even gave him pets that the temple housed and cared for, and once finding that Y/N didn't leave the area until Mu Qing came to find her. She was petting a pretty brown tabby cat when Mu Qing kneeled down and completely stole the attention of the cat. To mortal onlookers the cat probably looked like it was doing typical weird cat things, and a couple thought that the cat must be asking for pets and came to pet the cat as well, not knowing that their God was right there petting it with them. While petting the cat Mu Qing filled Y/N in on what he had discovered. The children who had went missing only had 3 things in common. They were all from impoverished families, they all loved the swamp, and they all disappeared somewhere in the north end. With this information they finally knew where to start looking!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's the link for part 3!

#mu qing x reader stop fucking with my cat #mu qing × reader #mu qing #tgcf #heaven officials blessing #tgcf x reader #head canon that General Xuan Zhen's followers know how much he loves animals in general so all of his temples feed strays #and a lot of them get pets as offerings that get to live the good life in his temples #feeding or playing with the pets in his temples is said to give you his blessings even if you don't offer anything else

[seeingteacupsindragons]

New Chapter Time! Mari Go Away!

Have I mentioned recently that I adore Herder? I adore Herder.

Herder has a thing here that makes me think of translation because what he says is like, "Ethic-less" but I think it would translate better as "anything goes"

WHY ARE THERE NORMIES HERE

Is that supposed to be Moran next to Jack? Dude your hair--But this is a nice shot of all their heights.

Herder's discussion of the weather is probably the most practical Japanese I have gathered from this series, but I'm probably going to forget this vocabulary shortly

Also Herder talking about the weather in terms of shooting people is just very. Him.

It is indeed Moran

None of the normies want to play this game. Shocking. Shocking.

Albert: I'm very sorry, Normies, for letting Herder explain this, because. Um.

Interlude: I thought this would be easier to do on two screens, but my zoom and orientation on the magazine keeps changing when I do anything on the other screen, so it is Not.

Bond is not Having it, and tbh, I'm not sure why, except that Albert just lied out his ass, I think.

Do senseis know that "Lord Kruger" being an English anything sounds absurd.

Albert: I am totally hijacking this hunting trip I was invited to for my own purposes so my "servants" could play. This is fine and normal.

!!! Is Liam finally going to shoot a damn gun?

Albert: Also this was my little brother's idea so think twice before insulting it. Thanks.

They're all now on board because William smiled at them. The bastard.

Liam's doing the hand thing again I called out last night. Although he's being kind of duplicitous right now but not straight up lying. He's in peak keigo form today.

Herder: You can have a pistol or a sniper

Moran, probably: THANK you, God.

Herder: Also I have rubber knives

Well there goes Liam shooting anything.

Louis, probably: Can I have a real knife

Herder: The paint looks like clotted blood

Me: Did...Did William ask you do that? How do you even know. You're blind. Who tested this.

Herder: And don't worry, the paint bullets are biodegradable because Fred complained about having to pick up Moran's bullets that one time so I avoided that necessity.

Are they just gonna knock out all the normies b/c tbh this would be more fun with just our murder fam.

Herder: I tagged all the guns MORAN so don't BREAK THE DAMN THING THIS TIME

I'm sorry it's really funny to image all the sniping and personal bickering that would be happening if they weren't being all keigo in front of the guests

I appreciate at least the visual cues that imply the bickering

Herder: For various reasons, I'll be the ref

The normies: Oh, it's because he's blind, poor thing, the Moriartys are so charitable

Louis and Bond: HE JUST WANTS TO WATCH THE GUNS

Normie kids are playing???

HELENA???

WAS THIS A THING IN THE LIGHT NOVELS

I feel like Patterson can't come to this event because it's public and he's a public figure and that would be Weird, but I wonder if this was like "Okay, everyone gets to play a game," because Patterson wanted a vacation.

Helena talking about her extremely sedentary little brother reminds me of Liam and sickly Louis okay

Finally some proper bickering now that teams are selected.

They got split into red and blue. Because.

Liam, however, got blue for once in his life

They have to tell us, because it's black and white. But they are shaded differently.

Moriarty brothers: What if we're all on the SAME TEAM?

Moran: HEY I'M ON THE OTHER TEAM YOU JERKS. THAT IS ABSOLUTELY NOT FAIR.

Bond sounds like city streetlights. That's super cool, actually.

Louis is all "my brothers and I are three hearts beating as one and together in flesh and spirit" and Louis you need to like, tone it down just a lil

Louis: OUR BOND IS SO STRONG NOT EVEN GOD CAN TEAR IT APART

Louis: ...but I'm not on their team in paintball.

Herder: If you lose, you have to go feed pheasants as a punishment

Herder: BUT IF YOU BREAK YOUR GUN, THEN--

This was long, but I just love Mori fam, okay?

#Yuukoku no Moriarty #Moriarty the Patriot #YuuMoriLT #YuuMori Spoilers #Heavy YuuMori Spoiilers #live blogging #Moriarty the Patriot spoilers #spoilers

[animehouse-moe]

Apothecary Diaries Episode 4: The Threat

Yes, I know, I never got around to talking about the first three episode of Apothecary Diaries, but let's just focus on the present! Namely, a rather popular duo (China and Moa Ang) have appeared on this episode as episode director/storyboarder and animation director respectively. Their quality and fine control over animation has given me some things I really talk about today!

So, a bit of background. China as a key animator is mostly known for their consistent work with Yama Nu Susume, whereas Moa Ang is a bit more freeform. Regardless, they've worked on quite a few episodes together as fellow key animators, and have (apparently) got quite the bond. But that's just a preface to the wonderful work they bring in this episode, most noticeable in the opening sequence.

I mean, the refinement of the character acting is incredible. Sure, it's not got any ridiculous shading or detail in the clothing, but the movements are so refined and real that it's crazy. The boldness of China's direction to rely on refinement that could produce a scene like this is pretty crazy. Even crazier is the fact that it's not a one off.

The use of static framing and the bold decision to avoid panning as much as possible really does a lot for the episode I feel. It brings a sense of tension that is only heightened by the character acting, and works absolute wonders when Maomao's composure breaks in regards to treating Lihua.

This part is really something special I feel because it stretches the limits of expression within such a "tight" show. It changes up Maomao's character design, messes with perspective, and uses framing to deliver a startlingly enraged Apothecary.

Using all of the tools at China's disposal, they force Maoamo to tower over the lady in waiting, they use the framing to ensure that Maomao remains taller within the frame, and even uses the makeup powder to provide a slight visual effect to deepen the feeling of the scene. It's impressively strong visual work that provides a subjective retelling of the experience through the lady in waiting's fearful eyes.

Okay, so maybe this post seems a little short? But I don't actually have much more to add. The focus on character acting in the episode is incredibly good, and unless I go through and provide individual examples of it, I don't have much to add. They do use camera movement in the episode, but it's thoughtful work that traces the movement of the characters rather than filling empty air.

I think one thing I wish we could get more of is the very bold environment art. Not that what we have in this episode is bad, I mean, it's all incredibly detailed and pretty, but the ones that play with light are just so nice.

There's just something that can end up feeling missing with environment art when you get to see ones like the above. Because, I mean, what we get of the Lihua's palace here certainly isn't bad. It's incredibly pretty and well done. It's just that without any sort of visual effects, it's almost... plain?

It's something I was actually chatting about with a friend last night in how strong composition and visual effects/photography is very much neglected in a lot of series. Now, I wouldn't say that this one is doing anything of the sort, but when you compare to the very strong and noticeable work to the prior two backgrounds and compare it to the third one, it feels like there's potential left on the table. especially because they're a little sneaky and denote differences in the time of day with the coloring. It's just not that strong, or at least I feel it isn't. I believe there's potential left on the table with where they're willing to go.

But yeah, that's about it. I wouldn't say I dislike the story through the first four episodes so far, but the idea of a purpose and direction doesn't really come to mind, and there's not a massive amount of depth to the medicinal side either. Not that it lacks a draw, but maybe delivery?

I just think about Raven of The Inner Palace. The setups are sorta similar, the flows are comparable. But the engagement and interest that appeared with Raven for me is entirely different. Here, it's almost the opposite- the visuals interest me a great deal more than the story has. I'm hoping that will change because the idea behind it is a very very interesting one that has a lot of potential, but I'm just yet to really be given the substance and depth of the series.

#kusuriya no hitorigoto #薬屋のひとりごと #the apothecary diaries #apothecary diaries #mao mao #drama anime #historical anime #anime and manga #anime #anime recommendation #anime reccs #anime review

[royal-ruin]

other genshin fic recs here personal favorites are starred, by the way. everything is complete unless stated otherwise.

yae miko / ei | raiden ei fic recs

nevermore by bluu (~1.5k)

[“Zhongli says a country directly reflects the state of mind of its Archon.” Yae reaches up with her hand and tucks a lock of hair behind Baal’s ear. “Are you lonely, Ei?”

“I am the Raiden Shogun,” Baal replies lowly.

“I know that.” Then, with teeth, she says, “I made you.”]

*My love, look at me once more by seultoki (~10k)

Miko had begged her to come out of the Plane of Euthymia so many times, but Ei had refused to give in just as many times. She only listened when it was already too late, when both her nation and her lover had been taken by war.

Or: Ei and Miko are trapped in a vicious cycle of life and death, where each time, Miko doesn’t remember who she is but seems to remember what she has done wrong.

this absolutely obliterated my heart.

*the transience of cherry blossoms and their perpetuity by skywardharp (~6k)

Ei meets Yae under the shade of a cherry blossom tree, and for the first time, something stirs.

*exile (you’re not my homeland anymore) by goldfinchex (~9k)

[“though I occasionally get a little weary of the sight of it — I can’t exactly avoid seeing it at the Grand Narukami Shrine, after all — my fate is intimately intertwined with the Sacred Sakura.”]

A love that would eat you up from the inside, devour your very lungs until all you breathe are the remnants of your longing.

an Eimiko hanahaki fic.

she sets my freezing soul on fire by raideneis (~3k)

[“…I will prove it to you in hundreds of ways why you should choose me over anyone else in this world if I have to. Choose me.”

Miko’s heart stopped. Like it is covered in ice. When it beat again, it felt like it is on flames.]

feat. jealousy and kokomi.

a sakura's memory by Sephirron (~8k)

The Sacred Sakura is injured and memories of the land come like a mist, where Ei is forced to relive the painful moments of the past she tried so desperately to escape.

On her path to put her ghosts to rest and pursue a new meaning of eternity, from the Sacred Sakura, she witnesses other memories during the great tragedy and her time in seclusion in the Plane of Euthymia.

Yae Miko’s memories, in all her anger and pain, that leaves the Raiden Shogun with revelations about how foolish a goddess can be.

*stay (do not go where I cannot follow) by cafe_au_late (~7k)

[If there was anything that Yae Miko hated, it was things that were out of her control. And it wasn’t that she wanted to control Ei. What she wanted was for Ei to stop running. Ei had been avoiding her, she knew this much.

But Ei is a coward when it comes to things like this.

So Yae remains there, hand still outstretched for the ghost of someone who had just left and been long gone all at the same time.

Stay. She had wanted to say.

Do not go.

Stay.

But Ei had fled back to the Tenshukaku, back to the Plane of Euthymia, back to the very place that Yae could never go.

Do not go where I cannot follow.]

(The conversations Ei and Yae have following Ei's return from the Plane of Euthymia)

i love fics that go into how yae miko deals with ei’s return after her abandonment.

*In Present, Transient; In Memory, Eternal by LogosMinusPity (~6k)

[“Of all that I have possessed in my life, my memories are the only things remaining to me. Indeed, I believe that memories are the only real treasure any human can hope to hold always.”]

*Long May She Reign by thebetterbina (~4k)

[“Hello.”

Makoto is easy to find on the palace grounds. The servants were more than happy to tell Miko that their princess enjoys walking the length of the garden. Where the sakura blossoms fall, and the sound of the shishi-odoshi’s bamboo arm striking rock breaks the stillness. The koi fish swim listless rounds in the calm water.

Miko smiles from the end of the guzei, hands folded together neatly in her sleeves as she gives a polite bow, her head dipping with the movement. “My name is Yae Miko.”]

The princess is dead, long live the princess.

#Genshin #genshin impact #genshin fic rec #yae miko #ei #ei x miko #ei x yae #yae miko x ei #yae miko x raiden shogun #raiden shogun #raiden ei #fic rec #fic rec list #f/f fanfic #f/f fic rec list

[foxilayde]

The Stranger Part 2/2 Jack from Mojave x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: 18+ ONLY. DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT. Dark themes, DARK. CHASING, NONCON SMUT

Summary: 100 second head start in a game of chase. Is it enough time to get away? Probably not.

A/N: I hope this is what you nasty bitches wanted lmao enjoy I love you guys.

How many seconds do you have left? 70? 60? Who is to say he’s even honoring that time frame, he’s probably already kicking dust behind you and the only reason you can’t hear him is because of the blood pumping in your ears and your wild breathing. This is what it’s like to be a jackrabbit, bounding in the bush from the snapping teeth of a coyote. Luckily the moon is bright enough that your footfalls avoid large things like the prickly brush and snake holes. 

Fuck, you should have known better, should have known that everything comes alive at night in the desert with all its nocturnal-eyed creatures, the prowlers and the dwellers. Big fucking mistake going out here alone, the biggest of your life, and the last one you’ll ever get to make. Well that and the mistake you make when your heel lands on a piece of pointed quartz or granite and at the last second you swallow your scream and attempt to run though it, to push past the searing pain in your heel and the twist in your ankle. Fuuuuuck. You have your boots in your arms but when (if ever) is a good time to put them on? When exactly will you have sufficient space between you and Jack when you can feel free to take a moment to lace up? Not now. Definitely not now.

You think it’s a trick of the moonlight when you see the cave in the split of the hill. The hill looks familiar, but so does everything. That’s the thing about the raw desert of the Mojave. It all looks the same. No landmarks to go by, just moderate hill after moderate hill of even sparsity and plant species. You weren’t quick enough to clock the position of the moon or the stars when you took off running. You went forward, but forward can turn to the side and the side can turn into a full circle and a full circle can turn into a spiral, especially if you have a tendency to keep veering right at every tumbleweed. 

You head for the cave anyway because at the very least, it’s shade when the sun rises, it’s a place to put your boots on, maybe to check if you have a compass on you so you can start plotting a real way out of here instead of running with your eyes on the sides of your head right into the path of a semi. 

The cave is deep enough and tall enough that you stand up fully the whole way into the dark recess of it. It’s not the sort of prey stronghold that would suit any creature of the Mojave so there isn’t any fear of running into anything when you turn at the end and slouch down. You should have pulled out your flashlight from your pack while you were still in the moonlight. It’s going to be much harder to find it like this in the solid black of the back of the cave but you don’t care. You need to rest, you need a gulp of water, and you need to put your shoes on. All of which you manage to do relatively well, and in your hiking boots you feel much calmer already, with your ankles secure and the warm compression of your socks. 

You pull from your half filled canteen, spilling some water down your chin and you wonder when your next drink of water will be. Where it will come from. This bottle isn’t enough to last you more than one or two days in the Mojave before you start to get sick with heat. You’re more careful with your next sips. 

You dig around your backpack to feel for either your flashlight or for your compass, the latter of which you finally get and shove into the pocket of your sweats. You hear a little rustling deeper in the cave and the thought suddenly sickens you that Jack has been sitting in the cave with you the whole time, in the absolute darkness, listening to you gulp water and wrap your ankle, your cursing and breathing, rustling around to find your things… just waiting in the dark. For what? For you to find your flashlight and turn it on his face? Just to scare you? You don’t know him well but he does seem to be one for theatrics. 

Your heart speeds up and your stomach drops, your imagination is picturing him right next to you in the blackness, the hairs in your ear prickle with trying to pick up any hint of his breathing nearby, and your mind tricks itself into thinking that he is there. You don’t know if you should leave, or wait it, out or find your flashlight and shine it into the darkness to know for sure. One thing is for sure, is that if he IS in this cave with you, he’s not going to let you leave, so you have to be smart about your exit. You can’t let him know you’re onto him, that you’re going to jump out of here quick as lightning. So you make a big show about sighing and fake leaning back against the wall of the cave, you pretend to stretch when you’re really getting into position to bolt out. Fuck, how exactly are you going to do this, really do this, really outrun the coyote himself, in the dark, especially with your fucking ankle?

You’re stalling and if he has any good predatory senses, which you know he does, he’s onto the plan and each second you waste debating and faking getting comfortable in the cave. He can probably hear the way your heart thuds like jackrabbits legs. With his glittering nocturnal eyes, can he see the way your eyes dilate and fail to focus on anything for lack of light and reference? Is it real or is your mind playing tricks with you in the dark? 

You swear you feel the heat of his breath on your neck when you finally push off the cave floor and make your hasty exit out, your clumsy feet slipping on the loose rock of the mouth of the cave, you brace yourself surprisingly well on your hands and run on all fours for several beats before righting yourself and taking satisfying shoed-footfalls down the ravine. You’re hardly ‘running’ at all, the gravity of the downslope doing all the distance-making for you. You aren’t careful the way you would be on a hike like this; taking it heel-toe-heel toe. No you’re side sliding at this point. Paces between yourself and the cave being the prime directive and in your haste the side of your boot catches only dust on your compromised ankle, sending you rolling down the dusty surface. Your eyes are full of dirt, your hair snags painfully on a brush and you’re blindly reaching and scrambling for something to cling to on your decent, fingers digging into tumbling thin gravel when the sliding mercifully stops. 

You wipe your tear tracked eyes on your sleeves and hoist yourself up on all battered fours, spitting out grains of sand. You think you smell water, hear the rushing of water. But it could very well be the smell of blood in your mouth and the rushing of it in your ears. The mind plays tricks on you at night. An oasis would be too much to hope for. 

You rise to your feet and brush the dirt from your sleeping clothes, sighing and groaning heavily you sit back on your heels. There is water, the rushing water of a small Oasis but you can hardly appreciate the glittering blackness of it when a long knife makes contact with your gritty, sweaty neck.

It makes your blood run cold despite the dark resinous heat of the night and Jack’s arm comes to wrap around your chest, pinning your arms (not that you’d struggle to move anyway with the promise of the blade at the pulsing life of you). 

“That was quite a show, sister, quite a fucking show.” You’re wrapped within the wings of his coat, nowhere to run. Even if you were to escape it’s only up up up in all directions here at the bottom of everything, where the water rushes, where you’ll never be found. Your lip quivers and and you tremble in his grasp.

“Gotta hand it to ya sister, lasted a lot longer than I thought you would.” He pushes you down then, your face to the side in the dirt, a knee on on each of your hamstrings, hands pinned behind your back. 

“What I don’t understand though, and maybe you can help me out with this, is why…” he uses his knife to cut a line up the back of your long sleeve shirt, exposing your bare back to the moonlight. “Why you took off out of that hidey-hole like a bat outta hell, hmmm?” He grabs your hair to pull your neck up, sliding his nose on the side of your cheek. “Something spook you in there?”

You choke on a sob when he kisses your cheek, “what was it, little sister. Answer me.”

“You.”

“Me? I was watchin the mouth of the cave from the ridge. Couldn’t’ve been me what spooked ya … oh wait… we’re you thinkin’ about ol’ Jack in that cave, sister? Wanting me in there all nice n’ cosy with you?”

If he is telling the truth, which you have no reason to believe he’s not, then it was all imagined, it was all in your fickle mind, seeing images in the absolute darkness, phantom breaths and threats. 

“Welp little sister. As fun as this chase has been, and believe me, it has been quite the diversion, I believe its come to judgement day, wouldn’t ya say?” 

Judgement day. Fucking death. All of that all of that scraping and clawing, running and hiding, only to be back at square one. You might as well be back at your campsite, shorn sleeping bag at your legs, forfeiting the hundred second challenge and letting him slit your neck like he’s done to your bag, to your shirt. What’s the difference if your blood spills here or there? Besides a more concise murder investigation.  

His knees continue to press into the backs of your thighs and he drags the cool metal of his blade up and down your exposed spine. 

“You don’t have to kill me.” You offer weakly.

“What was that, bright angel? Didn’t catch that.”

“You… you don’t have to kill me. Don’t you wan’t to keep playing?’

“Playing, you say? We did play. You lost. You don’t want to be a sore loser now, do you little sister?”

“What about a best two out of three?”

You aren’t thinking clearly, everything coming out of your mouth is an instinctual bargain to keep yourself alive for a precious few more moments, seeking this predator’s motivation. He said he liked the diversion, didn’t he? He must be bored out here in the desert by himself. If only you could prove yourself useful to him, to his entertainment. 

“Two outta three, huh?” This knife leaves your back and you can hear the way he scratches the stubble of his sharp jaw behind you. “I’m listening.”

“You don’t want to kill me.”

“Bold assumption, girlie, bold. Lets not forget who holds all the cards here. Bargaining 101? You’re gonna have to give me something I don’t got.”

Is this what he’s been angling for this whole time then? Has he been waiting to offer your flesh up to the buzzard on a silver platter. You hope that’s the case because that is a hand you posess, you can play that. But you’ll have to play it well. 

“A-are those the Deep Creek hot springs over there?” 

Jack growls a laugh, “Sharp eye, little sister. So you did get your little hands on a topographical before settin’ sail. That they are, that they are.” 

The little river flows only a few meters away and you start to form your plan. You lick the dirt and sweat from your lips and lower your voice as seductively as you can. “Let me wash off in that hot spring and i’ll… I’ll let you fuck me.”

Jack barks a laugh that brays to the moon. “Let me? You’ll let me? What hospitality, little sister.”

“Please, Jack.” You whisper into the dirt. He pauses a few more moments, dragging the blade up and down your spine again in a cold steel power move. “You wanna chase me? Into the springs? I can put up a fight if you want…” 

The offer hangs between you in a tempting shroud, you don’t know what’s going through his mind when he shifts his knees off of your legs and pulls the sweats and panties down from your ass and down to your knees, he glides the flat end of his blade lightly over the folds of your exposed pussy, bringing the blade up to his tongue to lick the frightened slick off the metal. 

“Mmmm, take your boots off. Go on, now. Get up, take those boots off, sister. I’m inclined to indulge in your little request.” 

You get to a seated position as quickly as you can, unlacing your hastily-tied boots and shoving them off along with your sweats and panties. Your shorn sleep shirt falls easily from your arms and you tentatively rise to stand, wobbling a bit on your twisted ankle, using his shoulder to right yourself.

“Providing you don’t try any funny business, you hear?”

You gulp and nod, hiding your chest instinctively behind shivering arms. 

He rises and licks his lips, scanning you up and down, tilting his hat up in a not so southern gentlemanly fashion.

“You want a head start, sister? ‘Fore I catch you?” His knife is dangling limply in his hand, he drops it in the dirt but holds his stare on you as he unlaces his boots, kicking them off along with his pants, duster and hat. In no time he’s down to nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs and the bandana. He shifts his arms back in a swimmer’s stretch and cracks his neck side to side.

“Maybe just… just ten seconds head start?”

“Smart girl. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Everything the moonlight touches is mine. Includin’ that pretty rump of yours.”

You’re under no supposition that you’ll be able to fight this man off and as he counts “One, two, better skiddle de do darlin’, three—“  You rush into the cold water, sloshing and making your way to the natural heated stone pools just a few strokes away. The oasis is teeming with life and you feel the little fish graze your legs as you splash and hoist yourself into the hot spring bath. Moments later you hear Jack splash and swim with tenacity, and soon, much too soon, he grabs your ankle. You squeal and kick his chest, which only makes him grab harder, using your leg as leverage to climb into the hot pool with you. 

The warm volcanic water feels like heaven on your muscles and you sigh into the natural stone bench of the pool. It feels very much like a man-made hot tub and Jack splashes in. He ducks his head under water and wipes the water from his face when he emerges. A distinct and instinctual part of you scans him, appreciating his fine muscular form. If he wasn’t such a blood thirsty desert dweller, he’d do well enough on his own to ensnare women with more reputable means. But he isn’t, so he ducks his face halway under water and grabs your leg again, wrapping it around his thick waist. Your breath speeds up a tick. 

“Fair and square, babydoll, fair and square two outta three.” He picks up your other leg and wraps it around his waist. “You gonna give me a congratulatory kiss? Or you gonna make me take that from you too?” He presses his bandana-clad forehead to yours.

Your shaking hand comes up to grip him gently behind his neck and draw his face close to yours, the moment your lips meet he’s licking into your mouth deeply, as if to drink the precious water from your lips. The water sloshes gently around the both of you and his hands come to grab your naked hips. It’s… not so bad, it’s nice even, with the warm water… he’s a good kisser for a bloodthirsty fuck, and he draws your hips closer, your pussy meeting his hard cock through the boxer briefs. 

Both of his hands travel up your waist in tandem, over your ribcage, hot palms resting on the sides of your tits, he thumbs your nipples causing you to draw his mouth even closer to yours, licking into the smoky hotness of his mouth. He flicks your nipples with his thumbs and grinds deeply into the open and needy center of you. The spring bubbles with tiny streams of heat around you and you use your feet to push down his boxer briefs, releasing his predatory heat from the confines of the fabric. He groans loudly into your mouth, forcing you you suck up the hot dirty expletives into your own. His pushing hips notch his hardness at the core of you and he presses in with tight interference. His cock pushes through your tense fear, fucking you more and more open with every thrust of his hips until he is fully seated in you, until his snapping pelvis makes solid fucking contact with the junction of you, and you cry into his mouth from the stretch of him.

“Ah! Mother always taught me not to play with my food, but in this case, I’ll have to make an exception.”

His arms snake around your waist and using the leverage of the spa floor he fucks up into your needy cunt, rubbing hot and hard at the apex of your pleasure. The water sloshes around you and you can taste the faint sulfuric presence between your lips when you continue to lick into his mouth, using both hands now on his cheeks to keep him there, rubbing his tongue with your own. 

Fuck, he’s so big everywhere, inside of you, around you, his figure blocks out the moon and you screw your eyes shut anyway.

You can’t be bothered to care how technically wrong it is to give and receive pleasure from this man who wanted to kill you, who his now licking into your whining mouth and fucking into your wet hole. He rubs so well against your cunt that you’re almost sorry to admit he’s going to make you cum, and soon. 

You break the kiss with a moan and bite your bottom lip when you convulse on his bare cock, fuck knows where it’s been, fuck cares. Your body achieves an equilibrium with the warmth of the springs when you cum, perfectly matching the heat of your skin. Your fingernails dig into his back and his thrusts speed up.

“Gonna fill you up sister.” He pants and smirks just out of reach of your lips.

“No, please.” No, he can’t. You’re not on anything, you can’t let him— you break his sloppy kiss and use your hands to push his hips away to no avail, you squirm your hips, but he’s got you painfully pressed against the natural stone and he laughs with a coldness unbefitting the hot spring and the hot air.

“Wasn’t up for debate, princess.” He licks the side of your face before burying his nose in the crook of your neck. “Fuck, oh fuck, here it comes, take it all, ohhh yesss. Yess, sister thats right.” Jack shivers, throws his head back and pumps hot into your tightly pressed body as you continue to shove his thighs with your feet to no avail. 

He goes slack and your final kick to his thigh sends him stumbling back. For a heart stoping moment you think he’ll retaliate but he just ducks under the water once again, emerging to wipe his face and throw back his hair. He puffs out his chest and howls to the moon then, a sound that chills your overheated bones. 

“Mighty fine chase, little sister. Best I’ve had in a long time.” He goes to tuck a wet lock behind your ear and you flinch from the contact. “Gettin’ shy on me now? Gettin shy on ol’ Jacky when you got my seed in your little belly? Nuh uh, none o’ that.” 

You drop your shoulders in defeat and close your eyes as a tear trickles down your cheek. 

“What are you going to do with me?” Your voice cracks feebly, realizing he’s had his fun and has no need for you now. There’s so many places to hide your body and you’re so far from your site it’s unlikely any recognizable part of you will ever be found. 

Jack climbs out of the pool and wrings out his sopping boxer briefs on the stony dirt patch on the side of the spring, stepping back into the soaking fabric, tucking his limp cock into the them with a groan.

“Well, I did have my heart set on slitting that pretty little neck of yours, full transparency sister, full transparency.”

You choke on a sob.

“But.” Your heart lifts. “Circumstances change, don’t they? Yessir. God help me, you look so pretty all fucked out and full of me, don’t you?” He bites his bottom lip and grabs your upper arm to hoist you out of the spring. The water sluices down your naked body and the rivuleting water glimmers in the moonlight. You stumble on your twisted ankle, using his bare shoulders to steady you.

“Choice is yours, little sister. I can cut your pretty neck right here, leave a feast for the buzzards… I can let you stumble back to your empty campsite all on your lonesome, or you can come home with me, choice is yours.”

Before you can think or answer he grips your chin between his palm. “Now, full transparency, like I said, I wouldn’t recommend option two, on account of I will be taking your clothes.” He gestures to the bank where your clothes lay. “Those are mine now; you’ll have no water, no way to find your way back. You’ll be dead by noon, garun fucking tee. Shit, if you pick option two I’d probably do you a mercy and just slit your fucking throat regardless.”

He’s right. There’s no way you’d survive without him, not that he’d leave you any loophole of staying at the spring to circumnavigate his stipulation; that you make your way back to your campsite. There’s only one option. 

“I’ll… go home with you?”

“Smart girl.”

“I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“Like I said. Smart. Girl.” His teeth glint in the moonlight and he pats your cheek condescendingly before gesturing to your ankle with a nod of his head. “Can you walk on that thing or is ol’ Jacky going to have to assist?”

You hold your chin up high despite your nakedness and your vulnerable state. “I can walk.”

His only reply is a grin before he turns around, back to the direction of your scattered clothes. He pats his naked thigh and whistles at you like a dog to follow. Which you do. 

END

tagging if you interacted with pt.1

@andromeda-dear @muunliight @lovely-cryptid @ophelialoveshandsomemen @bear-na-leabharlainne @theoddballinyourcloset @sharin4readers @h0unds-of-h3ll

#Jack #John Jackson #Jack from Mojave #Oscar Isaac #fanfic

[royalwilmon]

Get to Know Me Tag :)

thank you so so much for tagging me @skibasyndrome <3333333

do you make your bed?

almost never. like, when i wash my sheets, and then never again. cant be bothered!!!

what's your favourite number?

i dont really have one but ive been saying 36 for yearssss. from the glee days. iykyk

what is your job?

im a software tester!!

if you could go back to school, would you?

you couldn't pay me to

can you parallel park?

i mean. technically. i avoid it at all costs and if there is someone behind me witnessing me parallel park i will Fully Panic. but i can do it. mostly.

a job you had that would surprise people?

i worked at dunkin' donuts for three years. which isn't surprising, i live in new england. what does surprise people is when i talk about how much i genuinely loved that job and miss it Every Day

do you think aliens are real?

i guess i definitely think there are other life forms out there. hard to say what they'd be like, though

can you drive a manual car?

nah, i've never tried. don't have much of a reason to!

what's your guilty pleasure?

lmaooooo gut instinct is to say jimmy buffett. my spotify wrapped this year is going to be WILD

tattoos?

not yet! once i find an artist i trust, I'm going to get the comet chandelier

favorite color?

blue! i describe the shade as the darkest shade of blue the sky gets

favorite type of music?

my taste of music is absolutely all over the place, this is nearly an impossible question for me to answer. i have a lot of specific pockets of interest. i love anything that came out of laurel canyon -- really, a lot of 70s music i picked up from my dad. obviously i fuck with showtunes big time. and then lately i have a handful of artists im obsessed with that float somewhere in the indie/pop/jazz/folk world. like, so vague, i just cant say any sorta word that would sum it up. oh, also, omar?? seriously, i'm all over the place

do you like puzzles?

yeah! my sister loves them more than i do so i mostly only do them when I'm hanging out with her

any phobias?

birds!!!!!!!!!!!! i hate them!!!!!!!! im so afraid!!!!!!!!!!! so so so scared!!!!!

favorite childhood sport?

i played softball and basketball as a kid, but like. ehhhhhhhh.

do you talk to yourself?

oh, always. look, i work from home most of the time, and my roommates have very different schedules from mine so im home alone a LOT. i like to keep myself company. i am alwayssss chattering to myself. 100% of the time, just nonsense babble

what movies do you adore?

ohhhhh tricky question. i'll pretend im doing one of those letterboxd interviews and I'll give you my top four. fried green tomatoes (1991), camelot (1967), dirty dancing (1987), and everything everywhere all at once (2022)

coffee or tea?

coffee! like i said, i worked at dunks for three years. I'm one of those maniacs that drinks black coffee. i wish i liked tea, i really do, i just. dont

first thing you wanted to be growing up?

HAHA i don't know if it was the first but the story my mom always tells is how i wanted to be a cake decorator at Walmart. specifically walmart. she would encourage me to aim higher, like. 'why don't you be a cake decorator at the white house or something', but no. walmart. i was probably, like. five.

Onward tagging: idk!!!!!!!! im always late to these!!!!!! @goldenwilmon if you haven't done it yet??

#tag game

[mermaidsirennikita]

I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on Flowers From the Storm. I had mixed feelings about it. I liked how problematic the hero was, it felt very real for him as a rake to be a shitty person (even if I don't love the evil baby mama plot trope). I just found that the heroine did not work for me. But that plot was absolutely wild, and having just read Kleypas' Prince of Dreams I'm kinda missing the truly bonkers plots of old school historical romances.

I finished it last night, and I hope you don't mind me publishing this because while I get that it isn't for everyone (though I'll be real, I don't get the absolute haters for this book--I literally had someone on GR comment "don't read it, it's horrible" when I put this under Want to Read, unprovoked, and I'd never spoken to this person before lol) it is pretty undeniably a huge book on a genre level, imo. To do the shit this book did at the point in time that it did is kind of massively daring. And I do think that while there are some big swings and BIG MISSES from older historicals in terms of plot, I personally feel like part of the reason why the subgenre is going through such a slump in terms of popularity is that it doesn't swing as much anymore. Trad is trying to make historicals feel smaller, safer, more homey, like a lot of popular contemporaries.

The thing is that the audience for contemporaries wants those contemporaries. Just going outside of those small scale books (no shade, it's totally fine if that's your thing) is too much for a lot of people who consider that their niche. The readers who do NOT want those contemporaries don't want a book just because it's not a romcom. The books have to embrace their genres. If I'm going to read a fantasy romance, I want it to take big swings; same for historicals, paranormals, sci-fi romances. Even books that I consider fairly safe and homey for their subgenre, like Ice Planet Barbarians, are still so much wackier than those safe contemporaries. So HR, imo, is not going to pick up again until we see more of those BIG SWING books.

Anyway, onto Flowers from the Storm.

--I get why Maddy is a frustrating heroine to many, but I think I really liked that about her. She felt very authentic. Often, we see heroines who ostensibly have these "of the times" convictions in historicals, but then really don't follow through on a big level. I fucking love Scandalous Desires and I see no issue with this take, but Silence is a heroine like that--she's a Quaker, and it basically translates to "being good and a little sanctimonious". She caves without regret when she gets with Mickey, and she's letting him eat her out against a wall in no time.

I liked that Maddy's religious (and social) convictions as a Quaker MATTERED to her, and it made the moment towards the end feel a lot bigger. It made the act of her falling in love with Christian, essentially against her will, much bigger. She would have done basically ANYTHING to avoid loving him, because to her, being in love with him meant not only displeasing God and her community, but giving up what she'd always known and what she believed was the morally right thing. But she literally couldn't help falling in love with him. The feeling was too immense.

--I've never suffered the kind of TBI Christian suffered, and I don't have a lot of (close) people in my life who have, but based on things I've heard and read it felt like Kinsale made a big effort to accurately (or as accurately as possible) portray the immense frustration and confusion he felt during recovery. It was genuinely horrifying to read his early perspective--still the same person, stuck in his own mind, with all this knowledge right at his fingertips while being unable to grasp it. He knew what he wanted to communicate, he just didn't know how, and that is... terrifying. And devastating.

At the same time, I think the book (and his POV specifically) could've been a suffer-slog that would've ended up being more condescending than helpful, if not for the way that Kinsale so brilliantly made it clear that Christian WAS still himself. Like, yes, he was being horribly abused in this awful institution, but also... He was a haughty duke who thought himself better than the people abusing him, wanted to wear fancy clothes, and pretty quickly was devising ways to fuck this Quaker.

--Even though the sex is relatively light (I mean, pretty solid for the early 1990s in a historical, and in my opinion hotter than For My Lady's Heart but of course nowhere near my beloved Shadowheart) I found this book immensely sexy. And I want to say, I do think this was a really progressive move for the era in which the book was written. Christian is disabled, he is most definitely a fully grown adult man who can consent (whether or not he can verbalize his consent is another thing for much of the book), and he wants to, and very much can, FUCK. He can and does seduce--for a lot of the book, lol.

When we consider not only the depiction of disabled people in romance at the time (practically nonexistent) but the depiction of disabled people onscreen... Especially when the disability was related to the brain and communication the way Christian's is--there is such an infantilization, and there really still is on a very real level. The idea that because someone is disabled, they can't consent, they can't want sex and romance, they can't take an active role in procuring those things for themselves. It's so condescending and dehumanizing, and I really loved that the book didn't do that to him.

I mean, the cultural perceptions surrounding these issues are so real that I still see multiple reviews on GR saying that they felt uncomfortable with the sex scenes because they saw Christian as "infantile". At no point in this man's perspective is he EVER infantile. He's frustrated at points, which causes him to lash out in anger, something I doubt I would be able to resist in his position. He has a hard time getting words out, something he progressively improves upon over time (though, I did appreciate that the book ends with Christian still not having the exact same speaking style he had before his stroke, and the reality that some functions are just probably never going to be the exact same). He's fully an adult man.

But because there is that PERCEPTION, people just override that and somehow find him having (mutually enjoyable, loving) sex with Maddy uncomfortable. I mean, all the books where the hero kidnaps the heroine or basically forces her to have sex with him are fine, I guess, but a disabled man fucking hard is apparently distressing.

Anyway, long and short of it is, as someone who considers sex in romance novels to be incredibly important................... I thought that bit where he talked Hamlet to her before yanking her skirts up while she was all "BUT WE CAN'T FUCK NOW!!!!! IT'S DAYLIGHT!!!!!" was so.... delightful. I also really liked Maddy's sexual journey; it's a great awakening arc, and it obviously is such a huge metaphor for her very literally becoming a woman of the world and earthbound in a way that I don't think she allowed herself to be prior.

--Great cast of supporting characters. Love Durham and his dipshittery. Love Fane being like "you know Maddy I would fuck you if you wanted me to" in front of Christian. Loved Maddy's dad who clearly wanted her to get with hot math duke from day one. Loved Christian's aunt, who like, sucked on a lot of levels but was also hilariously and dumb practical in a way I appreciated. Walked in on them making out on the floor and went "well at least you're not gonna have an issue with getting her pregnant :/".

--I actually don't have a big issue with the baby mama plot, tbh. Could Eydie have been a more dimensional character? Yeah, but I find certain character types to be like... really symbolic of the era, and I don't mind them. She's very daytime soap, and I personally like those characters. To be honest, a lot of her behavior made sense to me, as a woman of the era and in her situation. Was it like, great behavior? No, but I didn't find a lot of it inherently evil so much as it was asshole-ish, but in a way in which I understood why she was that kind of person. I don't think that girl had much of a chance, and I appreciated that Christian even inwardly acknowledged that he basically led Eydie on. She was desperate for him to propose, it seemed like he might, and then she got stuck with this shitty husband. Popped out a couple of sons for that husband, finally got the guy she'd been pining for since before she was married into her bed, he got her pregnant and then maybe DIED??? Came back from the dead, doesn't want her or (in her perspective) their child. Now she's doing really poorly financially, with a kid she has a lot of mixed feelings about..........

Honestly, it was all kind of worth it to me for the scene where he looks down at his own baby like it's a kitten he's told the kids he's NOT keeping, and then slowly is like "fuck it I'm keeping it". Like, he really loves that baby, as much as he very much doesn't want to. This is really a book about loving people you don't wanna love, lol.

--The ending was fabulous, no notes, what a moment, couldn't even begin to handle that shit. "I WILL WAIT OUTSIDE FOR FIVE MINUTES AND IF YOU AREN'T THERE IN FIVE MINUTES I'LL BE GONE FOREVER" and then it cuts to him like "it had been over an hour and he was still there".

So yeah, 11/10, I loved it/

#romance novel blogging #book recs

[originemesis]

@lucifertxt from xxx

Lucifer reflexively raised his arm to protect himself in case that wing ended up reaching him. But apparently since it was a warning it did not go that far. Still, knowing Adam, he saw him as capable of throwing himself on top of him and trying to choke him with his hands. But it would be stupid of him to confront him like that and if they ended up fighting they would both have to take a bath together. But the bastard flicked water onto him!

❝ Oh come on! ❞ He grunted when that happened, wiping his face with his hand and then he stared at the other, arching an eyebrow. He let the other keep whining until he finally heard what he wanted to hear! ❝ Ah, that's why. ❞ He said and before Adam could try to do anything, the fallen angel reached over and quickly made the fabric he had trapped disappear. Easy, simple and the angelic power was still in him regardless. ❝ So much complaining even though you're bathing in a fancy bath. ❞ He said as he returned with his hands on his own hips and shrugged his shoulders. ❝ Well whatever. I left the towels next to here. Will you be okay here alone in the bathroom? ❞ Despite everything he offered to stay to keep him company, but he was going to give him space if that was what the other wanted.

The first time was just a dazed miscalculation on his part, but the second or third shake of his head was definitely on purpose. Almost like he hoped that golden blood mixed with bath water would become some degree of holy and burn the fucker. Of course, there wasn't much holy left of him aside the shade of his blood without the usual halo hanging overhead. Not that he'd demonstrated any holy behaviors before when the ring still hovered. "Tough tits. Maybe stand farther away? Y'know. Like out on the roof." Wouldn't be far enough in his opinion, but he was now officially an unofficial overnight guest, so he'd have to deal with the guy until he either drove him off with the gift of being himself (a nuisance) or he finally passed out in the tub.

The touch so close to the joint of his robe tangled wing caused a flinch, but his host seems to know how to avoid the bull's horns well enough to back off before he can register the offense past the alarm. And well- being completely swallowed by several layers of bloodied robes and under armor to suddenly wearing his Eden-best is jarring. Distracting enough that he'd rather worry about swinging his wing around his midriff like a makeshift toga rather than beat it over the other's head. That at least solved the threat of the wing in Lucifer's case. "I've seen fancier, obviously-" Heaven and shit. The man spat shortly before hiking a leg over the side of the stupid size of a tub in a haste to climb in and sink down further into a space eyes couldn't follow past the steam.

"Bro, is sitting in some water alone really the achievement you're making it out to be ?" Maybe for the depression addled. Not that depression was real- stupid hell buzzwords. "But uh...wait a sec. You live alone...right?" The twinge of concern in his tone is evident. He might not need the devil to be a rubber duck in the bath, but he absolutely doesn't need to run into the two last ladies whose perception of his rock bottom state of affairs would end up jackhammering him five thousand more feet under the bottom.

Just the thought of encountering either now had a shiver of something twitch in his spine and- before he knew it, out swung a lengthy snake of a tail from beneath the wing toga, the end fanned out in a flat paddle of startled gold and black mottled feathers that waved like a hand fan and whipped steam about with an aggressive burst of anxious wags.

#//dinos were definitely demon birds so ofc he has a utah raptor tail #lucifertxt #verse ; // dead on arrival #suggestive cw #long post

[naamahdarling]

Dude i love your whats the way to cheta burger (i hope i got the title right) but I was wondering what are your processes of taking pictures (or are they pictures) of your traditional art to post because man do i struggle

Thank you! I liked that one a lot, it has such vibes.

Yeah, they're pictures!

I either use my old (like 2015) digicam and edit the pictures with an ancient pirated version of Photoshop, or I just use my phone and edit it there. I'm certain there's good apps for it as well.

A huge part of this is how high res the camera is, because that's how you capture fine lines and grain. I bought an expensive-ass Pixel solely because of its camera. My digicam is a Nikon Coolpix L840 and is like 8 years old but still good for my purposes. I'd say they are about equal in terms of results with the Nikon being slightly better quality and the Pixel being much more convenient because it doesn't need a memory card and I can edit most stuff right there.

Lighting matters. I prefer photographing 2D art flat, with good overhead lighting, OR photographing it upright with light from both sides. Natural light is best for color of course but isn't always possible.

Rarely I will actually scan things with a friend's ancient scanner.

How reflective your paper or your medium is will affect lighting an absolutely bonkers amount, so you may have to move yourself and your art around to keep it from reflecting. Really shiny stuff may need a scanner.

You lose depth with shaded stuff when editing, scanners are best for that if you can access one, but they are not necessary unless you're aiming for prints or a fine art thing.

Here's a raw pic from the Pixel, then the edit:

Acceptable loss of some tone IMO for being done in my hand in about 30 seconds.

Crop first always, darks or lights outside the piece will fuck with your fine tuning real bad.

With black and white work, desaturate the image before you do anything more, to remove all color from whatever lighting you have.

For this image of Dried Pickle Man, I then went in and fine tuned it in the phone. In order: boosted Highlights, tinkered with White Point a bit, meddled with Contrast a bit. If your phone can't do that, the equivalents in my version of PS would probably be Levels, then Brightness/Contrast. Maybe Curves?

This barely needed to be touched since the blue came out accurate:

This is the original, what it looks like to adjust the skewed edges, then the end result after a tiny tweak to contrast and white point. On the lower right of the last image is where the ink was throwing back some light. This could be fixed in PS or probably avoided with scanning but since I am only documenting these for sale and for my own enjoyment they don't need to be incredible.

Again, a lot depends on having an okay camera, but Which Way to Cheetah Burger was taken 2 phones ago with a POS Samsung and looks fine at internet size and resolution. I edited it in PS I THINK.

I don't know how any of this would do if I wanted to do prints but just to document your stuff it's usually fine.

I hope this helps!

[staceymcgillicuddy]

Get to know me tag game

Tagged by @khaleesa who somehow knew I was stuck in a hotel room, bored out of my skull, and not about to watch the Superb Owl to pass the time.

rules: tag (8-10) people who you want to get to know better.

Relationship status: Perpetually and endlessly single. My last relationship ended two years ago, and I haven't even started dating again.

Favorite color: A very specific shade of blue

Three favorite foods: Really good fish & chips, tacos (again, they have to be good, and there's a lot of crap out there), a tuna melt from a restaurant that is now closed

Top 3 tv shows: whew, this is rough--I enjoy television very much. I'm sticking with the classics, though, and saying The Simpsons, Friday Night Lights, and Absolutely Fabulous.

Top 3 characters: Mary Lennox, Lisa Simpson, Wendy Moira Angela Darling (honorable mention to Stacey McGill, obviously)

What I’m currently reading: Real Bad Things by Kelly J. Ford, which was a Bookbub deal. It's fine! I read a lot, and the last great thing I read was The Immortalists.

Song stuck in my head:  Animal Crossing theme song, kind of. I'm not much for earworms.

Last movie watched: Clue because I can stream Amazon Prime in this hotel room and it was there.

Last thing I googled: directions to my meeting tomorrow

Last song I listened to was: A bunch of Fleetwood Mac because I was listening to a podcast about Fleetwood Mac because I am in my thirties.

Dream trip: A jaunt to the southern hemisphere to do Australia and New Zealand. I want to spend a month, at least.

Time: 7:45PM

Anything I really want right now: Validation.

Tagging: @pipergirl17 @pinkhoneydoodles-blog @bisexualchrissycunningham @hilarychuff @hangon-silvergirl @joansblondells @hellcheerocracy and anyone else who is avoiding the Superb Owl tonight.

#ask meme #dash game